Playing to the Gallery

When I was young, I thought artists were rebels. I thought being an artist meant egoic liberation and bold expression. Dali was always my hero. He seemed so daring and sincere. I’d never heard of Cy Twombly, and didn’t understand Mark Rothko. I’d seen his monolithic paintings in textbooks and been bored by them. Dali’s were exciting! And now, I realize Dali was a fascist and to call him insincere would be generous. Recognizing that someone who seemed an exemplar of personal vulnerability was reveling in selfish egoism casts a shadow on the very nature of artistic expression and its motives.

In our time, there are several celebrity “artists” on social media with half a million or more followers. They seem to fall into two camps, the influencer type and the more classic celebrity. The influencers are those from modest socioeconomic backgrounds, though seldom from poverty. They rely on trendy videos, TikTok, Instagram, and in-person social events. They usually settle on one specific genre to paint in, and some of them are genuinely passionate about it (at least at the start). They learn all the tricks that others use to stay relevant and they accept the yoke of stereotype, usually including a cute brand name. They identify with their trade to the point of surrendering their identity. I’ve written before about the idea of “branding”. The celebrity artists are young classically trained painters from wealthy families, with the means to travel the world and the freedom to paint without concern for profit. Ironically, because they come from wealth, they can paint sincerely the subjects I paint from obligation.

This sort of thing happens in music, too. The celebrity musicians are evident, people whose character isn’t deep but whose pockets are. As for the influencer-cum-musicians, it’s much the same. For example, I chanced across a video of a really wonderful piano performance. The young man was playing a Chopin etude with Hip Hop percussion played by muting the strings with one hand. He is an excellent pianist, but I was disappointed to discover that was really a one off. He likely spent years mastering that 60 second passage and I’m sure it paid off in advertising. The rest of his playing was very conventional.

All of this occurs within the panopticon of contemporary social media. Our likes and dislikes, our emotional responses, are vivisected by the algorithm which groups us into categories. Instagram recently implemented a “friends” section, like Facebook. It broadcasts our likes and comments to our “friends” as a form of collectivist coercion. I used to love the Facebook meme pages, the post absurdist “deep-fried” ironic humor of the new lost generation. But I realized engagement would be shown publicly, so I never “liked” or commented. That has become the norm for all engagement. We can’t risk being exposed as deviating from our collectives’ protocols, so observe silently, assimilating into the panopticon itself.

“Playing to the gallery” is a term from the days of public theater performances in merry olde England. The gallery was what I grew up hearing called a balcony. In the church I attended, and most southern churches that could afford one, balconies were provided for visitors and those who might be disruptive to the service. Undesirables sat in the balcony, or at least that’s how I understood it as a child (and children often understand such things more clearly than adults do). So, when an actor “played to the gallery”, they were pandering to the low brow interests of the commoners. I’m sure Shakespeare faced that criticism, as many of his plays were baudy and scandalous for the time.

Social media, and now AI language models have sapped our collective attention spans. The common people of Shakespeare’s day were in many ways superior to the ruling class. Labor was still their primary occupation, but they had leisure time and Sundays off. Now, most of us are “hustling” in the gig economy, and our techno feudal liege lords are proposing ways to let people work in their self-driving cars to maximize efficiency. Our minds are constantly occupied by an endless stream of empty “content”. I’ve never used Tik-Tok, but the name speaks to it’s nature. It’s a noisy cycle of inanity ticking away the moments that make up a dull day, to quote Floyd.

Most art galleries these days are “playing to the gallery”. As much disdain as I have for the elite galleries of New York, and the “fine art” programs of our elite Universities, they are at least pursuing art with the gravity it deserves. Rothko and his contemporaries were the coda of modern art. Since then, aside from Warhol and Basquiat, fine art has fallen into a routine. A lot of modern artists are experimenting with texture, space, and variations on action painting. Conceptual art involving religious devotion, political messaging, or both is still championed by some galleries. But the majority of smaller regional galleries seem to have given up on art and fallen back to business.

It may be due to the economical strain, because the internet has democratized selling art. Where galleries once controlled the market, now they have to compete with independent artists like me who can sell directly to the public. So, galleries are becoming focused on being trendy. Bright colors and exaggerated techniques. I even see galleries unironically selling paintings of Star Wars characters and video game consoles as “fine art”. Several major galleries here in the southeast have gotten in on the Mahjong trend and host game nights in their showrooms. To me that’s like selling doves on the temple mount, but art itself isn’t appealing to modern Americans anymore, there has to be something fun to do instead of look at pictures on a wall!

I see painters with hundreds of thousands of social media followers, and I feel ignored. But, I’m learning that most of them aren’t just artists, they’re “lifestyle influencers”. They’re playing to the gallery. In the case of Mahjong, maybe playing in the gallery. Conversely, some of the most serious artists I see have fewer than 1,000 followers. And it doesn’t take a large audience to succeed as an artist, anymore than as a musician. With the exception of Joshua Bell, Yoyo Ma, and Hilary Hahn, I can name more NASCAR drivers than classical musicians. But they are out there earning a reasonable living and making a serious impact on the world. Likewise, serious artists often go unrecognized in life.

Playing to the gallery remains a temptation for me. I do have to earn a living, so I try to paint what the market demands. In the southeast that tends to be egrets and sunsets over marshes. I am trying to find a balance between creativity and pragmatism, and remember not to try painting things that truly don’t appeal to me. I’ve been in the situation for most of my life that I couldn’t afford to decline a commission, but I’m going to start being more selective. I spent 14 hours or so recently painting a large 4’ oil painting of egrets flying over a marsh. I hated everything about it, from the concept to the execution. I used several different photo references and tried to pull out all the stops. But when there’s no passion, it’s like a loveless marriage. I finally painted over it this week.

Conversely, I have a lot of fun painting silly things for friends. I did a painting of Hulk Hogan recently and have painted Star Trek parodies, Monty Python scenes, and so forth. I can manage them, because there’s some motivation there. Like the portraits I’ve done as tributes to other artists or musicians. When I try to work purely for profit, that passion is missing. That’s why artists have traditionally been subsidized by the state. Up until the Reagan administration, our National Endowment for the Arts awarded grants to provide living wages to artists. As our economy continues to stagnate from inflation and the effects of AI on the job market, artists are the canaries in the national coal mine. And I’ve been singing for years.