90s Art Redefined About 17 Years Later

    The 90s were without a doubt the best decade anyone has ever seen in this ever-changing world. Gone were the ideals and the decade-long wars and the idealism that brought about wars, the world was shit, and we were going to confess this to it for as long as we lived, we would find our girlfriend, or boyfriend of the world, and wrap her in a Gothic veil of confessions and ply her with the goods of confectionaries, and confess that our love had not always been for that person. In a world filled with lies, and hate, we would find our perfect home against all that had come before, and our beautiful loser bodies would find each others' mate, our touches were the gold and chrome and yellow of real film, the digital age was upon us now, and we just weren't any good at it. But everything was new and golden and warm. And our parents would never find out about us. Like they never found out about my girl slitting her wrists the night before, and coming back after a day away she found me, and said, “It wasn't about you, it was about this world, it was about all this shit we worship, and this orgy person I used to know, but he slid, and he died of AIDS and a part of me always wished I'd marry him, and a part of me knew he was too good for me, or even Hollywood, and now he's dead. But I have you instead, and you can make me free and good and warm, and we can write letter's about a cannibal son we never had, and we can entertain the darker side of the psyche and drink warm wine together, and I will lace it with drugs you have never heard of and fuck my spouse he was always a dick. I have such a nice house alone with the ghosts why don't you move in, you'll fit right in.”

    Now 20 years later with the largesse and indolence of another generation, this time that is trying to care, I've already learned where that goes. When I look back at the art I don't see another world half of those here one earth have never seen, I see a day and then another day, waking up to a light sometimes you didn't want with half-open eyes it looks that much better. The days scorned so much, somehow add up together, and you miss those voids where for 5 years you wrote only music, and the only artistic product of those days, than whiny music some room mate rips off, and people can't imagine why you would laugh so hard when a woman does a sack dance to it. And you remember how much you wanted to care... and maybe now that it is gone. Now that it is so far away, with those eyes turned away, the idle dreams forgotten, the certainty of the pain remains, and you wonder, why you can not wander those hall ways again, speak words to those shadows of who we were. But life runs on, now all those people have children, and you have a hollow heart, a rack of trophies no one has ever heard of or will see, but cares more for than they will ever know.

    I have bought you a slurpee, sweet one. And I come to you to cover you in come when you awake you will know it was over. I hold a beer, even 24 for you downstairs, and I have not seen you in 17 years, won't you come and play. The world is forgetting its hollow wars again, its loose morals, are almost ready to say “Fuck all the consequences we will live -- so we will not die”, you tried not to bury the child of our immortals, only prison did. And you can summon us from the dead and talk to us, or being not fully a god, you can wander on and remember why we hurt, why we cared, why we had lost all hope, and you will remember why we loved in the 90s, and why we should still love that decadent, loserish, misbegotten decade with misty eyes, and bring our offerings and prayers.

I wonder at the statements I hear from fellow artists that the image should all look the same, that we should be trying to make all things photo-realistic. And I kind of want to smash the mirror on that one again, as I look back at the images, all of them mixed in with strange, but definitely hot porn, because our browsers would not let us easily decide where to store our art. This is a message time after time that I try not to make anything out of, but it is a seductive way to display a decade of decadence, and indolence that forget its own importance for the ideals of others. Maybe it just needed more of an ego to be perfect – and more porn.

    This world makes its judgments at 100%, or 110% all the time if you still care. I really don't give two shits myself. The name of the game has changed, and the art has slowly changed, my Gothic debaucheries I realize were mainstream art in the 90s... everyone said I should do more, but I did less, I think we all did less in the 90s. Trendy? No. Antisocial? Yes. But at the end of it it drove me made, insane with my own insurrection against not caring, and trying to piece the world together. I changed the Queen in England, and killed a bunch of Assassins and one guy who I think was a Russian spy, who lost like his life like his country recently lost Communism. I convinced no one to care, and in my mind it slipped away.

   What is broken about modern art?  Even the glossiness seems broken.  What is haunting about it?  Perhaps that a hundred artists try to work at the same Manga image when it would take them less time to work on a photo-realistic painting.  And you go to a traditional art class and they still want you to paint in a certain style, and critique you when it isn't that realistic, and when you realize that only 10% of the painting has to have a fine degree of detail it is a personal break-through and nothing more.  There is also something strange and snobbish about art galleries where fights break out.  But unreal in its strangeness instead of the salt of the earth elegance of the past century.  The shadow of a war is breaking out between traditional media artists and digital artists.  Perhaps there will be amusement there that we could benefit from, likely it will detract overall.  Can people just not say you can make art however you like, just don't copy when you steal your art?  And another thing I wonder about is how digital will detract from visual art, like it has gutted most forms of music.  But there is something  there because art isn't real until it gets printed.  Or will the war continue until digital art is hated because of the copyright slobs.  Or should we just axe copyright and pay artists directly when we buy something with their name on it?  Forget about stealing, its all stolen already, and there are 20 versions of Monet's sunflowers, and the best copies are better than the original we mus know, and if we don't we should dig a bit more.  

    The snake of art is beginning to eat its own tail, yet the immediacy and the intimacy of digital art, and many individual artists has improved as they have improved.  And how should I contemplate this, as a relevance as a loss? Like a James Bond who sits in alleyways trying not to sob and scream? Like a Rembrandt who sees all images inside his computer shifted, and can not find a world or a context for his own dreamings and forbearance? Or that one's mind was opened with such joy so many times that it broke. Opened to the learning of University, opened to the mystic realms of Occultism, opened to the heart of Philosophy, and moved by the maths, the sciences, becoming a master of Information Technology, and English Literature. The perfect Englishman who can make your dreams, and save a country from itself. If I lost myself as the cost to this all would I care? No I would not. Would they have to tell me they were generous, or help me see what love and life is and what a mystery? No you can only live within yourself, your one mind must unify it all somehow.

    Would anyone else in the world say that with the strike of midnight at the birth of the year 2000 all hope was lost? That an eternity of not caring, and useless indolence would become all the things you never wanted, or perhaps did. This world died sometimes, and our dark dreams were frozen. Certain things should be let loose that are with held. Like the witch-doctors of Science we sit and scold each other, for not being perfect in our art, our memory our words, our hope. Picasso says, “Draw 2 lines, make a mistake, then another line and a mistake, and then continue.” Art is about mistakes, like life. It is the analysis and the summation that matters, not what happened to you. That is who you are. Your soul is who you want to be. Life, like art becomes so self-reflective that eventually like the 90s we just don't have to care.

    At the end when they tell us to go to the gallery we should stare at the doorway, or the fire extinguisher and critique it. The greater art is that which frames the art, the indiscernible, the mad, what indiscretions it opens up to us. I would hope to find people in a gallery that do not care as much as I do with a passion. That want to, and have lost that hope in humanity that we had back then. Only in our acceptance of the world's madness and our intolerance of it is there hope. The artists cares, they truly, truly care, and they care too much. And right now there's something being stripped right out of it that I don't like anymore. Some antiquities are given too much relevance, a surge toward art being the sunset, and not the landscape of another world. A breaking of the humour and sarcasm of Dali, and the implementation of Hitler's post cards, and addendums by Jung renamed to be Freudian, and somehow with sycophantic reasoning all that we create is a psychology about ourselves that it never was. Don't poke holes in us artist because you care! Poke holes in yourself, poke your eye out, pretend that there are no pretensions, then you will begin to truly see.