Art History Isn't Just About Winning Trivial Pursuit

Have you had an adventure this week? I miss getting to hear your stories and comments. I think I have a remedy for that below.

But first, there aren't many things I despise in this world.

Yet, I can confidently say that I despise it when my brain feels limp, like a soggy grocery store turkey wrap stashed away in my refrigerator. It's a waste. All that potential sitting there because my brain decided to take a nap.

But when I am "on to something", that's when my brain becomes a great, passionate, adventurous friend -like Tom Sawyer convincing his buddies to run away and become pirates.

When that "thing" I'm pursuing forks off into tributaries of adventure and learning, it's like Tom and his friends setting up camp on Jackson Island fishing, swimming, exploring, following pirate protocols from adventure books, free from civilization.

That's the feeling I'm after, that tidal wave of optimism where one discovery leads to another.

To that end, here's an update.

Thanks to a friend who's prone to clever prodding, I'll be adding Substack as a delivery option for the newsletter.

This newsletter needs to grow. (Otherwise, isn't this all for naught?)

I also have devised a plan to build a community of creators who can talk to each other, with perks. Details to come.

I'm not as nimble as Tom Sawyer, and I don't have a motley crew to help me roll this out. It may take me a few weeks. (If you want to help, let me know!)

In the meantime, would you help me grow this thing?

Share the newsletter with other creators, artists, designers, architects, filmmakers, et al.

You can send them this link to subscribe. OR if you would rather have me invite them, send their email to me here.

For this week's issue, I want to start with Creator Economics.

We have hard-hitting advice from contemporary figurative painter Eric Fischl (we featured his work last week) and out of everything offered here, it's the most important info for us as creators.

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The following is an excerpt from the interview of Eric Fischl written by Loney Abrams entitled, "It's Profoundly Tragic": Eric Fischl on Painting America in Decline" in Artspace Magazine.

Abrams: “I have one last question for you, which is do you have any advice for young painters who are working today? Whether it is career-wise or working through problems in the studio. Any kind of insight?”

Fischl: “The art world that the young artists are involved in today is not the same as the art world that I was in as a young artist. It has totally changed. My learning curve, which involved adjusting to the pressures of the art market world, had a much more solid historical base in art. Now, artists start off in this art market world, which means that the market is their base. They're making product.

When I was a young artist I wasn't making product, I was making experience that's a huge difference.

My advice to young artists would be to try to learn as much about art history as they possibly can.

The job of the artist is to keep art history alive and moving forward. If you don't know anything about all of the stuff that has been done historically (and painting being the longest tradition, with the most baggage and the longest track record for invention and innovation) then you are screwed.

If you want to be a great artist then you better learn about that stuff.”

OUCH!!!! You know what I love about this? Even more clarity on why we study art especially the old, old stuff and why here, we study all the creative disciplines.

Why Art History is Your Strategic Business Asset

Art history is your R&D department. Why do you think the "Masters" copied each other's work? To learn technique and principles that had been tested across centuries. Here’s a few examples of that!

Leonardo da Vinci:

Michelangelo:

Raphael:

Peter Paul Rubens:

Caravaggio:

Van Gogh:

Degas:

Draw from the deep well of innovation and proven visual strategies. You will create work that feels both fresh AND rooted in something substantial.

You learn not just what to do, but when to intentionally break the rules.

Studying how masters embedded meaning through symbolism, teaches you how to communicate ideas both subtly and overtly in ways that resonate across time.

Art is not neutral. Never has been.

From the first cave painting marking territory to today's gallery walls, artists have been documenting power, challenging it, or serving it.

Art has been political since its’ invention.

Roughly 4.5 centuries have passed since El Greco, Velázquez, Ribera, and Muñoz painted royalty and allegory in Spain.

To be a painter in the 1560’s was no easy feat, but to be so good at it that their artwork is admired and celebrated today is legacy.

And now 57 pieces have crossed the Atlantic from 5,000 miles away to grace the walls of the Blanton Museum in Austin, Texas.

From the intimate devotional works to the expansive funeral pieces, I felt the same visceral response those paintings were designed to provoke in 16th-century Spanish churchgoers: awe, submission, spiritual overwhelm.

Velázquez's court portraits still radiate royal authority.

These were instruments of power, designed to make viewers feel a certain way about God, king, and empire.

Sound familiar? Fischl's 'Late America' (from last week's issue and more on it below) operates in the same tradition: art as political commentary, art as cultural mirror, art that makes us confront uncomfortable truths about power and its decline.

The tools change, but the mission remains: artists have always been the ones willing to show us what we might not want to see about ourselves.

But beyond all that political weight those Spaniards were damn good painters. The grey browns, the black on black, the rich red browns, the layers and swirls of built up color -they emote. They're vibing from a distant time and a foreign land, chiding us, "you should have been here.

Go see art in person and as often as you can.

(Here’s a look at a few artworks and artwork details from the show. I did not take these thinking I would share them here. I don’t have all the details to attribute painters to paintings. I’ll get that right next time.)

Last week we started a discussion about Eric Fischl’s Late America, 2016.

I asked you to send me your thoughts on this piece and talk to me like we’re in the gallery discovering it together.

One viewer noticed something striking: "Generally, children run around naked in summers and the adults stay clothed. It is a reversal of some sort." Here, the naked adult male lies curled up headless, genitals visible but face hidden-while the child stays fully dressed, wrapped in the American flag.

Pretty remarkable thought!

The painting captures this complete role reversal that speaks to where we were in 2016 and has only grown more intense and messy since then.

This flip suggests something's broken with identity and purpose.

Here's what Fischl said about his work:

The headless figure can't face something.

As another person put it, "his life of privilege has imploded."

Meanwhile, the workers in the background come across as the most together people in the whole scene "fully clothed, fully covered" like they've "escaped the naked vulnerability" of the guy on the ground.

They seem "unfazed” by the man being passed out (or whatever state he is in).

It's as if they see this every day in various forms and have learned to 'stay out of their business.'

They just keep working while the privileged fellow is exposed and helpless.

The kid wrapped in the flag hovers over this whole mess maybe representing what America becomes next, or the weight of inheriting a broken legacy.

Perhaps he’s wondering what happens when the people who used to be in charge can't provide answers anymore?

Fischl painted this during the 2016 election, documenting what he calls "American decline" not just political, but something deeper.

It's a picture of having everything but meaning nothing, privilege without dignity, and the loneliness that can exist even when you've got it all.

Here is one for you this week.

Send me your thoughts on this piece and talk to me like we’re in the gallery discovering it together. You can write me here.

Sasha Gordon’s show Haze opens next week at David Zwirner Gallery in NYC during art week.

Here is Sasha’s instagram…she’s should be followed!

And it turns out that Eric Fischl has a new book, Late America.

You can preorder below.