Painting, loyalty, and allegiance

Painting does require loyalty and allegiance to its cause and not seduced by the far side of commercial Art. just like every path of life, Painters don't need an honour or OBE to be loyal, it should come counter-intuitively! ! But if you have been the recipient of patronage, do watch out! It could be a cover story for being secretly black balled by professional jealousy! but here's the thing, most Artists don't choose 'track and not field' metaphorically, that decision may be one that somebody else makes, like they are warned "that you'll only get a low grade degree if you make the mistake of choosing Painting as your specialism". Now theoretically some specialise in track or field, one event or two, or all events with the complete spectrum at their behest! But here's a reality check, TATT restricts and excludes inspiring Painters, even if the British public responded positively to major galleries being opened and to much popular interest during the last war. Therefore, it is not surprising then that most equate the Painting global diaspora of Art as visual authenticity and also were intrigued and also approved of Modernist Painting even if it wasn't a literal figurative type of Art that classical Art espouses! Such originality of the visual building block of art was thus experienced as a 'first contact of all the senses’ and not just a cursory glance to waste away boredom! This was also crucial to Modernist Painters, who were renewed and restored by public interest! Just like Donald Bradman playing cricket after the war in the UK, painting boomed and contributed to the atmosphere that inspired the transformative post War Labour government! But even the end of the Cold War much later didn't inspire a new progressive reception to Modernist Painters by TATT, who decided not to repeat the war time experience and blueprint of the public interest and 'definition of Art '!

Indeed, why are we so confined in being subjected to high tech Art, AI, social media art, in fact why are we condemning singular Painters to not being able to work unless in a formal collective to de individualise and to lose their own process and identity? Alternatively, why should individuals be more important than a team in any sport or profession but perhaps except in the medium of Painting? Well, any athlete isn't just running their race in their event, they also have an entourage of physios, nutritionists, coaches, doctors, surgeons etc, but Painters are on their own! In business they have specialists and workforce answering to the inventors, or entrepreneurs or accountants etc. Some Painters form bonds to share their isolation, bounce ideas off fellow sufferers and there is always a network for the choice of informal or otherwise with likeminded enthusiasts! But ultimately, for Painters today they do not have to be financially successful to help or contribute in their community and yet be loyal to their specialism in all its solitude. In fact, many Painters may also be keen on debunking the Conceptual Fartship, whilst being ready to ditch Art tech omniscience!

So, who should conform or pull rank? Who needs hierarchy in Painting today? Well, most parts of life require some participation and deferring to intel or wisdom, but Painters get to choose! Indeed, that is not such an anomaly as you think! Even the armed forces, which rely on a chain of command and ultimately a hierarchical series of unquestioning following of orders, as a disciplined unit is by mutual consent! Certainly, TATT rely on status, qualifications, academia and a centralised coordinated overview to manipulate and select their influences! But unfortunately, they do come across as 'trying too hard to the young guns whilst reserving the right to form their own fiefdom! Over intellectualisation and patronising people and then looking down their noses may actually be the job description that is also manifestly condescending!

Perhaps their intellectual value is by twitter or X or by legions of the herd prepared to ignore their champions studied cultural myopia, deliberately or unwittingly being provocative and not challenging! Many Painters aren't just loyal to their medium but loyal to all of Art, validating all our great institutions of democracy and our oldest Parliament but not for our newest form of social hierarchy to be found by a fusion of the old establishment and the new establishment of coming from nowhere to looking down at their cultural fiefdom! Remember the big and the small Painters please, but we should bend the knee to our top of the whole food chain in the UK and not loadsa culture! Here's a thought for the last 50 years (except the largely 'Painter anomalies' like Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon, Maggie Hambling, Tracey Emin and David Hockney etc) if you don't paint and you become commercially successful no one will tell you "NO", but being told "NO" is the main part of life and not experiencing life on every level renders you and your success as a hollow failure that you trade in for pounds and being spent before your time! So, do you have to have more guts to be a Painter? Yes unequivocally! But do you waste your life being successful without commercial success? Absolutely NO!

Art is overstretched or fully stretched for a reason - it's called a canvas of Art! Tort and bespoke, it is both inside and outside the box thinking! The canvas works on two rudimentary levels, inside the parameters of the canvas itself, as well as being subjected to a world from outside the literal parameters of the canvas. Let's say it has an import and export function, and fights with Paint upon it, and where also the Paint coalesces as the mediator between the external and internal influences that fuse or repel. Our Painting medium is meant to stretch visual expression of unlimited potential upon a focussed finite space but to embrace all of the known and speculate on all the unknown Universe whilst the world explodes outside the canvas! This is a narrative and a paradox too!

When I think of paradoxes I think of Schrodinger's cat in the box that relies upon the probabilities and outcomes that are mutually preserving! O. r, let me think about Pandora's box where tension from within and from without are released by breaking in from outside and breaking out from inside. They connect together firstly from internment, imprisonment, and locked in, and secondly excluded from the outside and locked out. Opening Pandora's box requires theoretically a key from outside and a key from inside, and without its opening it can be seen to be protected inside and protected outside, all to protect and preserve its contents from being exposed or destroyed. Painting too has been locked-out and locked-in, and it is no surprise that a wave of purchasing by Oligarchs attempting to historicise Modernist Painting by their definitive market purchase power in Auction houses of pre 1945 modernist Painting can be controlling 21st century Modernist painting of today! So, instead of state totalitarian Sovietism and the American unpredictable frontier spirit of Art and capitalism, our era has seen a further characteristic that imposes its brand of Art criteria : purchase power of super rich billionaires now dictates and relocates what is commercial and what is rejected today, tomorrow, and to rewrite yesterday! Ironically, Oligarchs can buy up history to relocate future Art practice too! Today Art is bought as investments, not as portraits (selfies) from the renaissance to narcissistically exhibit, but as a specific way of controlling the market by purchase and putting them in huge vaults to exclude people from seeing them! It isn't just the feeling of superiority that these treasures are buried in vaults to prevent appreciation of it by competitors but to advertise to the general public that Painting and Modernist Painting is beyond their reach!! !!!!!!!!