OXYMORON - A STATEMENT

True ART (oxymoron) masquerades in the realm of the sacred Object (whose value is calculated on ‘rarity’ - the inconsequential relationship between availability and demand) and subverts its sanctity through simulated passion.  The Object is left slumbering in the hallowed chamber like a satiated lover, while ART slips out the window with the flatware.  The Object offers up her sacrifice of atonement at the crossroads of Commodity and Concept, but the muse of neither only passes by without noticing, thus revealing how lost She really is.

"Show us a sign!" cries the mob with their eyes clenched shut, but they don’t really mean it.

ART is a trick that strains our calcified joints.  The pain in our limbs reminds us that the sinewy and ambiguous connections between fixed and rigid concepts are what enable movement.  Their compliance allows articulation, giving voice to the insignificant. Inspiration is an Indian gift that no one gets to keep.  Your lipstick on the peace pipe only says that you participated in the smoke ring; but you can’t own the tobacco, even for the instant that it flows through your nostrils.  To ‘Bogart’ these sacred joints for selfish pleasure or personal credit, will corrode the fibers of your lungs and take your breath away.  Do you hope to prosper from the coins you stole from the bowl of the blind beggar?  Will you gloat over the profit margin of Objects pilfered from the graves of antiquity or boosted from the naïve hands of the desperate artisan?  

Marcel once observed that everyone makes something.  A wright is a maker of Objects, but ART reveals the ligaments that give Objects their say.  This diction can be a weapon of mass deception, a crafty expedient, or the gift of contra-diction.  Is our mark a sign of ownership or authorship?  What story does the sign-nature tell?  Does it matter?  Shall we sign for every soul that brought the gift to us?  This is the only provenance that counts.  Our ancestors’ bones are brittle and should rest in peace.  They can no longer walk and must not be idly disturbed.  They can only be re-animated with the ambiguous re-flexion of ART.  What shall we call a maker of signs?  Such a cultural menace can be tracked only by their way-marks - the scat and footprints he leaves behind.  Follow if you dare, but you will pay dearly for them.  

The brush is dragged, not pushed.  Its mark is an afterthought - an echo of gesture – a skid-mark of articulation.  Good bristles have a natural curl to them. What once retained body heat now forms capillaries whose flow is controlled by angle and pressure, and must remain flexible to make a re-mark.    

Are you the only one that doesn’t get it?  A sign is something that substitutes meaning for something else. Significance is not the thing itself.  A sign is a consequential lie – a semaphore of illusion.  The Object whose import is so unbending that it cannot be used to tell a lie, is useless to the ART of telling truth.  It can’t tell anything. All artists are liars, false prophets and aimless wanderers.  Follow them, if you know what’s good for you.