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October 13, 2005 With images of Hurricane Katrina's destruction clearly in mind, I strode through the gallery with a sense of unreality about its atmosphere, the artworks and even about myself. Increasingly in the new millennium, I feel like a performance artist, dressed up to play a gallery hopper or stylish aesthete; meanwhile the world outside my immediate sphere is slowly unraveling. Sometimes, I feel like a character from the 1985 futuristic movie, “Brazil,” by Terry Gilliam. “Brazil” juxtaposes a world gone amuck with elegantly dressed society people languishing in garishly expensive settings. Employing surrealistic devices such as voices in the background, the nightmarish film brings home the pointless pursuit of wealth and fake beauty as the middle class suffers from the encroaching effects of environmental degradation. Genuine art (of any genre) is born from the artist's inner struggle to connect with a greater reality God, the cosmos or the human spirit. Art that presents images and ideas we've never seen before inspires us, helps us to see the world in new ways and continues to resonate with viewers long after it is completed. "Defining art is a tricky proposition since we generally don't know it when we see it. Contemporary art presents concepts new to us in a language we often don't understand,” explains Mark Chamberlain, co-founder of BC Space, Laguna Beach. “By the time it becomes familiar and comfortable, it is undoubtedly more artifact or product than art. At its best, art may move us to action, but the real thing will (at the very least) change our impressions of the world forever." The Orange County art world has the resources, freedom and education to address the pressing issues of the day in paintings, sculptures and multimedia pieces. Venues that present challenging works include: The Orange County Museum of Art with “Girls Night Out,” addressing the plight of young women in today's unsettling world and “Beautiful Losers,” showing art created by street people. The Laguna Art Museum's “100 Artists See God,” with its often bastardized spirituality and “OsCene,” showing emerging Orange County art, were provocative and sometimes shocking. The Bowers Museum's exhibition of Phil Borges' “Bridges to Understanding” had 39 hauntingly beautiful photos of indigenous children. Grand Central Art Center's “Raw, Boiled and Cooked” comic book art displayed a crude, youth-inspired, often political vision. I enjoy observing people who are looking at art, however art is defined. The more stimulating the works, the more animated the viewers become. At Laguna Art Museum's recent “While Pollack Was Sleeping” exhibition of Bay Area Abstract Expressionism, wildly colored and textured canvasses incited viewers to discuss the works with complete strangers. Conversely, the atmosphere at the recent gallery opening the one with the pretty, brightly colored pictures was tepid and almost unbearably polite. Attending the opening while TV screens across the world were filled with images of death and destruction along the Gulf of Mexico, I was reminded of the dreamlike incongruities in Terry Gilliam's “Brazil.” I was also reminded of Picasso's words (in the book “Picasso's War” by Russell Martin): “What do you think an artist is? An imbecile who has only eyes if he is a painter, or ears if he is a musician…Far, far from it: At the same time, he is also a political being, constantly aware of the heartbreaking, passionate or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. How could it be possible to feel no interest in other people, and with a cool indifference to detach yourself from the very life, which they bring to you so abundantly? No, painting is not done to decorate apartments.” OCM You can see challenging, provocative art at Laguna Art Museum: (949) 494-8971, Bowers Museum: (714) 567-3600, www.bowers.org; Grand Central Art Center: (714) 567-7233, and BC Space: (949) 497-1880, www.bcspace.com.
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