Black Ivory 5.7.26, Emma Doesn’t Sell a Painting
Here is a rough rundown of the podcast:
• Edgeworth calls me up on What’s App, and we begin the podcast.
• Edgeworth and Emma ask about the Rose and the Amateurs Nature Center gig last week. He tells them they played 23 covers, but it was more like 20.
• Awkward time at an official ceremony. People standing still, watching us.
• Ron has been painting because the weather is bad.
• Emma is forced indoors to paint because of the forecast, which is often wrong.
• Edgeworth doesn’t go to Camden because of the forecast which is often wrong.
• But he’s working when not in Camden.
• Ron and Edgeworth are retired.
• Emma had her exhibition at Mill Hill but unfortunately didn’t sell anything. Good turnout though, maybe 300 people. 40 - 50% sold. Just not Emma’s pieces. Badge of honor!
• Emma’s friend paints turtles and she sold a couple.
• Edgeworth points out that people have no taste. Emma has work worth looking at.
• Flower pictures sell. It’s just how it is.
• These exhibitions are cliquey, says Emma. Ron agrees.
• Edgeworth talks about all levels of the art world being rotten with nepotism.
• Edgeworth presents his flowchart putting Free Art Frees Art at the top. It’s like a family tree. How to make all these projects that we’re doing make sense and put them all into one context.
• Black Ivory and Advertism, for instance, are under the umbrella of Free Art Frees Art.
• Money has been replaced. The art world is being replaced. Free Art Revolution.
• Nebulaic!
• Ron makes point that Edgeworth is already making a name for Free Art.
• Must make the ideology work in the real world. It must be self-sustaining.
• An artist can make money around Free Art Free Art.
• Kuwait drilled sideways!
• Emma attended a Tracey Emin exhibition and shoed a couple postcards of her paintings.
• Emin had a miscarriage and didn’t paint for 5 years.
• Ron decries celebrity artists. Every time she paints a picture she makes a hundred grand.
• Ron says it’s his turn to be a celebrity.
• Emma shows her print she’ll hand out in Camden with Edgeworth on Saturday.
• Edgeworth exhibits his Steemit, Blurt and Ecency art made with LPs.
• Edgeworth exhibits his LP art for Kozmic Records in Camden. Watch for the Studious album, Farangers, Elbow Sisters and 2 Out of 3 Rule promotions.
• Ron asks about the Camden booklet. Edgworth recently had 3000 printed.
• Emma asks about outdoor sketching. Ron lies and says he’ll be doing it too. But Ron doesn’t like plein airing.
• Edgeworth goes through the booklet.
• He uses GIMP to prepress.
• Black Ivory Lets Anarchists Create Kash In Violation of Rogue Yesmen
• Emma counts poorly
• Elections in England!
• April 5 is end of tax year in England.
• Edgeworth is a Sole Trader.
• Tax law in U.S. does not support new business.
• WPA during the Depression. Ansel Adams, Edward Hopper, Philip Guston. And Ron was wrong about Hopper. He didn’t take any funding. He was a conservative Republican who hated the New Deal and thought Roosevelt was trying to become a dictator.
• Edgeworth is eager to talk about Johnstone Chats
• One second of quality content in 59 minutes
• The UK vote
• Emma Green, Edgeworth Reform, and the Donald Trump button
• Your Party is Your Party and a confusing name.
• And then more politics, you’ll have to listen…
• More politics and power’s universal hold on hypocrisy and corruption…
• A missed opportunity for Anarchy For Art
• More politics that culminate with Ron requesting a Britsh invasion of the U.S.
• The Second Half of Johnstone Chats arrives
• Painting at Camden
• People won’t let us be the opposite of successful
• We wind down for another week
It's been an interesting piece, especially because it's often true that our art is almost never well rewarded; all we have left is the infinite pleasure of creating, even though it doesn't put food on the table. But we persevere on the path of art. It's a narrow path, a path of solitude, where we need fellow artists who share our vision. Only then will understanding, learning, and peace come.
I admire anyone who uses art as a human response to all the ugliness that surrounds us. @ronthroop
Usually I am an optimist about the artist life, that it is one way to throw other sufferers a rope onto the quicksand of dystopia. But lately I don’t know. In the U.S. even the artists decry art that reflects the human condition. “Political art”, as the gatekeepers say disdainfully. As if we, the visualizers of dreams are “above” politics somehow. Well, if artists are too aloof to contribute to how a society defines its power dynamics and settles its issues, then I believe they’ve taken arrogance (or timidity) to a new level of social madness. Something far out of the range of human, where it has always been a responsibility of the artist to bring people together. The timid artist is an oxymoron that is far too common today. No good can defeat dystopia if we cower behind the front lines of change, where soldiers fighting the good fight wait for the amperage to act. For instance, a place like Texas, losing its passionate artists to the profitable pull of oligarchial greed, will never evolve to a higher level of “understanding, learning and peace”. On the contrary, it can only get worse, as we live today, idling in traffic, fingering our smartphones to oblivion. Religion has lost the way. It doesn’t seem to want to help. Its ministers prefer to join the flock, worshipping Tuesday night potato chips and Netflix® on TV. The “narrow” path, and solitude, might be good for individual freedom—it might even point a few isolated humans to the philosopher’s stone. But it comes with a devastating price. The artist must call the slaves, as Rimbaud wrote, to “go over mountains and shores, to hail the birth of new labor, new wisdom, the flight of tyrants and demons, the end of superstition,— to be the first to adore!—Christmas on earth!”
Otherwise it’s all for vanity displayed on a stale, lifelong path to new shoes and death. I don’t want solitude. I don’t want vanity. Give me universal poetry and the abundance of earth and nature!
Basically, make artists hate again, but with abundant love. And that takes a lifetime of practice!
I wrote a letter to a painter friend about her aversion to political art here. Artists are the reflection of a society. If we just continue with the pretty flowers, then we just help perpetuate a lie. A big one. And what good is that for my granddaughters?
Thank you for listening and the kind words:)
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I liked hearing what you talked about and your notes. 😃
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Yes, we cover a lot of ground each week! Thanks for listening:)
I find it super you keep doing this and stay in touch
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What else is there to do? Artists need society too! :)