Liberace & Looney Toons
I was charmed by the essay on Liberace. What a strange person Dave Hickey chose to be the embodiment of American cheapness. He was a "genuine rhinestone." His views on the austerity of burgiousie art are mine exactly. The likening of art professors to monks in a cloister seems more than appropriate. Culture is meant to be experienced; I sometimes wonder how many art proffessors really allow themselves to enjoy what they do. Besides his profound meditations on the trueness of all that is fake, I was especially moved by the revelation about color. Yes, I thought, he's right, color does defy language, it does transcend the pedestrian instinct to want to identify everything, and that is probably a good example of linguistics, since color is therefor something we rarely notice. I opened Webster's dictionary to the entry on "color" once, and there were two-and-a-half pages attempting to explain, including fully-printed color wheels, diagrams displaying light behavior, and primary and tertiary relationships. Courtesy of G. & C. Merriam Company (it was an old dictionary.)
But Hickey's take on the vibrancy of American culture seems somewhat dated, since the experiences he sites no longer constitute the general fodder of the mainstream. Fewer and fewer kids today watch Looney Toons. The material made accessible for their consumption now includes an ever-flattening, soulless variety of one-dimensional cartoons generated by simple-minded animation software, a process which requires little or no reflection. What does not fall into that category of lame-ness is usually twisted, psychologically disturbing humor about beating your friends up and setting your parents on fire. Or there is that aweful 3D stuff, which could be really inspiring except the people who create it are incompetant and the characters all turn out ugly, revolting blockheads and are anotomically wrong. Could this be a sign of the decomposition of our culture, or does it indicate a shift in priorities from childrens' values to adult? Because there are these awesome art cartoons, like Courage the Cowardly Dog and Sealab, but they are not fit for small children at all and you should probably not show these to them.
Once again, I am at a loss as to what to ask. Any questions I did have would be for the author. What are his biggest inspirations? Is he an artist himself? Does he indeed see music as more important that visual art, and can you even separate the two?
