Dear Friedrich –

The Wife and I are on vacation in Sedona, Arizona. Do you know the town? An amazingly gorgeous area, in the same (very general) neck of the woods as the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley, and full of what everyone fondly refers to as “Red Rocks” -- peaks, mesas, valleys and boulders of a deep rust color. Huge skies with three or four weather patterns visible simultaneously; snakes and cacti; surprisingly dense patches of desert greenery … No matter which direction you look in, you pretty much expect John Wayne to step into closeup.

The town itself doesn’t have much to recommend it unless you’re a seeker; it’s a New Age haven, full of rumbling tourist buses, pink Jeeps taking clutches of midWesterners for trips out to the Power Vortexes, and stores selling wind chimes and crystals.

Lolling around the great west, I find myself wondering about three questions.

• Are you as fascinated as I am by the way certain styles and personalities make it onto the semi-permanent cultural menu? Two that have become perennials are hippie-backpacker style, and punk-rock style -- who'd have thought? You and I were around during the early days of both styles; I don’t know about you, but at the time I’d never have guessed that either one had long-term potential. I also have no idea why they appeal to contempo kids. Do you?

• Are you as struck (and annoyed) as I am by the way video screens seem to be cropping up everywhere? For instance: above the entrance to the typical NYC subway stop is a rectangular, iron-encircled space that for years has been filled by an advertising poster. Slowly, these posters are being replaced by video screens. And, as video screens will, they flash, they glow, and they twitch -– they’re yet another grabby distraction you have to train yourself to ignore.

  And at airports ... Killing time at airports has become even more annoying ever since airports started filling waiting areas with TVs tuned to news, sports and financial channels. The TVs at New York’s LaGuardia are almost inescapable; it can be hard to find a gate-side seat that doesn’t face a TV, or at least put you within earshot of a TV. Is it written in the Constitution that every vacant square foot is fair game to sell as advertising space?

  New rule of American life: if a video screen can go there, it will.

• Are there categories of art whose members are all bad? (Not including such categories as “lousy art,” wiseguy.) As our recent conversation about light entertainment hinted, I’m inclined to think that non-lofty art categories have much to offer. I like some cowboy art, for instance -– enough, anyway, to feel ashamed that I don’t know the field better. And I’m prone to think that even such categories as “tourist art,” “t-shirt art,” and “greeting-card art” can be interesting; god knows I’ve run across handsome and attractive tourist art, nifty and funny t-shirts, and beautiful greeting cards. And for all I know, all three fields have spawned creative titans.

  But do all art categories generate at least some OK stuff? How about … “New Age visual art”? I’ve poked my head in a few Sedona stores and galleries, and the New Age stuff all seems bad: bare-breasted women feeling goddess-y; howling coyotes; iridescent rainbows; Native Americans looking hunkily shamanistic. I’ve taken enough yoga classes to know that even the New-Age-related category of “drone-y music to play during yoga class” has its better and its worse practitioners. But in my (admittedly tiny) experience, all New Age visual art stinks. Or am I as yet too uninformed and narrowminded about the category?

Your thoughts about these matters appreciated, as always.

Best,

Michael

No matter which direction you look in, you pretty much expect John Wayne to step into closeup.

Small wonder, since Wayne made several westerns there.

But don't let those red rocks fool you -- you're a long way from Monument Valley, which is on the Utah border, in Navajoland.

Posted by: Tim Hulsey on April 2, 2004 2:13 AM

Oh -- the best places to learn about "cowboy art" are the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and the Buffalo Bill Center in Cody, Wyoming.

My faves are Frederic Remington (a good quasi-Impressionistic painter, and an incredible sculptor) and Charles Schreyvogel (who did several very dynamic paintings of US Cavalry officers, including one famous work where a soldier points his pistol directly at the viewer).

I also like Olaf Seltzer, even though most of his hundreds of landscape paintings are the size of postcards; Seltzer's patron was a dentist, which explains the size. Charles Russell is a good illustrator with a pretty keen wit, but on an aesthetic level he's pretty banal stuff. Apart from that, it's the usual big-canvas American Romantics: Bierstadt, Church, Moran, Alfred Jacob Miller. Sydney Lawrence is the best big-canvas Alaska painter I know of; he comes later than the others.

Posted by: Tim Hulsey on April 2, 2004 2:25 AM

>even the New-Age-related category of “drone-y music to play during yoga class” has its better and its worse practitioners

Indeed. A yoga teacher friend of mine has Led Zeppelin on one of his CDs-to-play-whilst-teaching. OK, admittedly it was Stairway to Heaven and not, say, Black Dog. Neverthless I found it amusing and went away planning to make him an anti-yoga compilation CD with lots of AC/DC, a nice bit of Motorhead, some hard techno, perhaps a bit of 80s German industrial "music" etc. Never did, though.

Posted by: Alan Little on April 2, 2004 4:29 AM

"...Native Americans looking hunkily shamanistic." That sounds like pretty good art...perhaps Great Art! :)

(If you think drone-y yoga music has any good practitioners, you have just seriously called into question any claim of Good Taste).

Posted by: annette on April 2, 2004 6:29 AM

Michael:

There are some very good photography studios in Sedona. One in particular had some very striking photos of New Mexico and Arizona (will have to doublecheck the name of the place this evening).

I agree completely on the New Age art and people in Sedona and other Arizona locales. Very little of it appealed to me, not even talking about the exorbitant costs of it as well.

Posted by: Kevin on April 2, 2004 7:06 AM

Never having been to Sedona, I can't comment on the place. But my cousin lives there and makes art; I would call her fairly New Age and I admire her work quite a lot. The "New Age visual art" you dislike is just kitch.

Posted by: Laurence Aurbach on April 2, 2004 10:01 AM

Yeah. The video screen thing. That would be one of the primary reasons I no longer go to Ralphs to shop. (There are flatscreen TVs at the checkstands.) I don't care what Prince William is up to, and I don't want to see your thirty-second recipe for chicken surprise. Take your God damn TV out of my face!

Posted by: Luis on April 2, 2004 11:47 AM

Tim - Foat Wuth (aka Cowtown) has an awesome Museum of Western Art - The Amon G. Carter Museum of Western Art to be exact. And we have the Cowgirl Hall of Fame with some great art of the genre as well.

As an avid fan of all things western and Texan, I can say there is a wide range to fit all tastes in western art. Like Tim, I prefer the classics of Remington or Russell, but there are some wonderful new kids on the block as well. Check out Hugh Campbell III's artwork.

And like Michael, I find the new age stuff, for the most part, to be way too cheesy. Hell, I had those posters on my walls in the 70's and they were baaaad then. Funkadelic, baby.

Posted by: Cowtown Pattie on April 2, 2004 12:37 PM

Re: video screens and news, we flew to London days after September 11, which was scary enough, but on the return trip, CNN was blasting at every gate in Heathrow. I was already in high anxiety without having to hear the words 'terrorist attack' every few seconds before boarding the plane.

Re: yoga and relaxation music, I have done enough yoga now that I do really dig a lot of the "drone-y music to play during yoga class" (or during massage, I might add). Something that still shocks the aging and not-quite-ex-punker in me sometimes.

Posted by: Dixon on April 2, 2004 2:15 PM

Video screens have been installed at the baggage claim area at Lindbergh Field in San Diego--yet another disraction while looking for one's same color, same shape luggage.

Posted by: Sheri Harris on April 2, 2004 3:17 PM

The Amon G. Carter Museum of Western Art to be exact.

Cody and Tulsa are pretty much tied for the top spot, at least in terms of Western art holdings. Cody has the best collection of Buffalo Bill and cowboy memorabilia in the world, plus it's close to Yellowstone National Park, so despite its rural location it gets a lot of tourist traffic. Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum has one of the finest collections of Native American artifacts in the world, though it has never had the space to display them properly (or for that matter, at all). But though the Gilcrease is located in a regional urban center, it doesn't get much casual tourist traffic -- Gilcrease, alas, is the sole major attraction Tulsa (or for that matter, northeast Oklahoma) really has.

Fort Worth's Western art collection is good, but not up to Cody or Tulsa.

Posted by: Tim Hulsey on April 2, 2004 4:00 PM

The Amon G. Carter Museum of Western Art to be exact.

Cody and Tulsa are pretty much tied for the top spot, at least in terms of Western art holdings. Cody has the best collection of Buffalo Bill and cowboy memorabilia in the world, plus it's close to Yellowstone National Park, so despite its rural location it gets a lot of tourist traffic. Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum has one of the finest collections of Native American artifacts in the world, though it has never had the space to display them properly (or for that matter, at all). But though the Gilcrease is located in a regional urban center, it doesn't get much casual tourist traffic -- Gilcrease, alas, is the sole major attraction Tulsa (or for that matter, northeast Oklahoma) really has.

Fort Worth's Western art collection is good, but not up to Cody or Tulsa.

Posted by: Tim Hulsey on April 2, 2004 4:00 PM

I was a hippy backpacker. Not as recently as I would like to think, but relatively recently by your standards Michael :-P So maybe I can explain the appeal, to me at least. Its about a sense of possibilities.

Which is not to say we (if I can dubiously classify myself as a young person for the purposes of this comment) actually lack freedom, but it is not always immediately obvious in a life in which getting good qualifications is followed by getting a good degree and a good job and finding someone good to spend your life with. A few years, or in the case of at least one of my friends, ten years, spent bumming around, really shows you just how big the world is, how much interesting stuff it contains, and how little one really needs to get around and get by in it.

For Europeans, especially the British, with our tiny tamed islands, that is particularly true of bumming around in the USA. I think Australians and New Zealanders see Europe in much the same way. Which relates to your comment about red rock country: until I actually saw it, I never really believed it existed and that it was so .... big.

I love places which people travel through. Even airports. There a sense of potential. From those places you can get to anywhere, and if you have time to spend hanging around, it does not even cost much. But as for video screens in dpearture lounges: I hate'em. My local Tesco has them in all the aisles, with audio presumably intended to make you buy things (soda water noises in the drinks section, and so on). Drives me scatty.

Posted by: Simon Kinahan on April 2, 2004 5:02 PM

The work of Alex Grey (www.alexgrey.com--look at the 'progress of the soul' subsection of the 'paintings' section for a good sampling) could fall into the "New Age visual art" category, although it also falls into the overlapping category of "psychedelic art". I think his stuff is pretty interesting visually.

Posted by: Jesse M. on April 2, 2004 6:41 PM

I was in Sedona two years ago. I was absolutely stunned at the plastic manufactured look of the artwork in the galleries (and I stopped into quite a few) out there. I don't know what accounts for it. Sometimes I feel like a Martian in my own land.

Posted by: ricpic on April 2, 2004 8:34 PM

Amusingly enough, there's a good museum of western art in Corning, New York, of all places. It's called the Rockwell, and its site can be looked at here.

Many thanks for links, ideas, jokes, ribbings, and comments. Led Zep in yoga class is my fave, I think. I took a yoga class today, and the hunky teacher played soft funk music, which seemed to go over with the ladies in class exceedingly well, as did his encouragement to make "releasing" sounds. Lots of enthusiastic moaning and groaning was happening in that class, and the ladies looked all grateful and glow-y afterwards. "And he's only 21!", one of the ladies said to me, a look of blissed-out wonder on her happy face.

I wonder if the video-screens-everywhere thing is popular with anyone. It just seems so ... insulting, doesn't it? You feel like a lab rat being subjected to some crazy kind of torture, at least I do.

Interesting too to learn about the hippie-backpacker allure for Euros and those Down Under -- helps explain a lot. "The Beach," I suppose. Fascinating that it seems connected to contempo career-obsession. Who'd have thought the streamlined training kids today get would contribute to the perpetuation of hippie backpacking, though of course it makes sense.

Reminds me for some reason of something a Brit friend who visited Texas and the Southwest told me. He loved it, had a great time, but told me he never could move past thinking that he was in a movie. The fact that people had guns, wore jeans and cowboy hats, the fact that there were red rocks and saguaro cacti -- despite the hugeness and impressivness of it all, he could never stop seeing it through the books and movies. Now that's someone who's sense of irony is maybe a little too strong.

Any thoughts from anyone about why punk style has lasted so long? That's a real puzzler to me. Talk about a style that looked like it'd burn itself out in a few years ...

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on April 3, 2004 12:12 AM

Good question! IMHO, Punk = a gag reflex. No true musical instrument talent, and ignorant lyrics. Of course, country music has certainly had its share of ignorant lyrics, so that in itself is not a unique characteristic. And, on the subject of lyrics, I guess rock has had some too, think "Louie, Louie". But, I stick by the poor musical talent.

Posted by: Cowtown Pattie on April 3, 2004 9:24 AM

Is it written in the Constitution that every vacant square foot is fair game to sell as advertising space?

Lord, it seems so, doesn't it? The operating principle seems to be that there should be a brand name in eyeshot at all times. I wonder if any studies have been done on the effectiveness of the degree of saturation we've reached with advertising these days. I can't be the only person who ends up tuning most of it out, or at least as much as I am able.

I remember when I started noticing the constant encroachment of advertising into any space large enough to contain a message: five or six years ago, the first time I saw that the little plastic bar you put on the conveyor at the grocery store to separate your order from the next person's, formerly a single color, was now emblazoned with product logos.

Posted by: Jaquandor on April 3, 2004 9:37 AM

Michael:

I couldn't find the name of the gallery I was looking for. Will post again if I find it. If you get a chance you might want to grab a dinner at the Enchantment Lodge. The place is simply gorgeous. I couldn't afford to stay there, but simply was a spectacular place to eat surrounded by the Red Rocks.

Posted by: Kevin on April 3, 2004 11:05 AM

I haven't been anywhere west from NYC farther than Detroit, but my parents took a car trip to the Grand Canyon once. I remember my father showing me terrific pictures he took and responding to my compliments with "Oh, anybody with a basic sense of composition could do it there, National Geographic level: the colors, the shapes, the scale and most importantly, the air is all there already, all you have to do is to click". So it is a bit strange to read of "plastic.. look in the art galleries" in a land that should be inspiring something magnificent. Or is it precisely this unsurpassed magnificence of the environment that stop the artists in their efforts?

...I wonder if the video-screens-everywhere thing is popular with anyone. It just seems so ... insulting, doesn't it? You feel like a lab rat being subjected to some crazy kind of torture, at least I do...

Same feeling I have when subjected to the bouts of taped laughter of the TV shows: what do you think, I am that stupid that you have to show me where to laugh?

Posted by: Tatyana on April 3, 2004 11:33 AM

The US West is a place of big spaces. Who gives a sh#t how some artists portray it if it is not to your liking. Just sit and breath it in. The vistas, the big sky, mountains, altitude Sun, wind, dry air, dust, the grasses, the ancient trees:
the oldest living things in the world.

Boring big picture perspective: trade is one of the ways how we keep slavery at bay. We trade and better ourselves. Advertising is the medium of broadcasting trade opportunities. Easy to dis – hard to replace. Advertising performs a useful function and supplies the pay to furnish us with media outlets, among other things. When you got a choice, turn the channel, the page, whatever, I'm not one to dis it – one is free to ignore. TV in public places is bordering on encroachment – yet it still is cool to check the news out. Just another option. Though I'm likely to be reading a book or lamenting that I didn't have one – in any public waiting situation. I've never been wont to watch much tv. If you're discerning enough to know that a good portion of news is slant – you can adjust your affinities to reflect the slant you prefer – in this way encouraging the business's you use to provide content that suits your taste. Might not be quite enough to soothe your sensibilities though if one was inclined to believe a good portion of the masses were atuning their choices to a return to the dark ages preference. I'm old enough to gain some serenity from having experienced some of the glory of living in modernity. So if it went to sh#t, back to some groveling dust bowl – although i'm sure I wouldn't take it well, I have lived in the best that minds have ever accomplished – and there's some peace to that. The Kids don't have that yet. I'm loath to imagine them in some decline & fall. Some mutated slavery, luddite regime. Be a sad spectacle. Might appease envy. I don't know how anyone can avoid some level of depression with realistic assessments of modernity, History for that matter, psychology be damned, some of the time -- but your efforts here, sometimes pursuing the arts make for some breaks in that, among others. Great Blog. Thanks for sharing. Don't want too go to high with the accolades but what your doing requires some effort, experience and brains plus a willingness to have close to negative monetary returns on your efforts – so some appreciation is in order. Plus the ego enhancement might allay some of the costs incurred attending ivy league schools. If I attended one the them and made the money that i make ... I might have a chip on my shoulder. Of Course, I don't run a Blog like this – guiding the masses to an appreciation of the Arts, and hence, appeasing their stupidity, to wanton destruction and nihilism, that we're all not immune from, some more than others (though maybe that is over reaching a bit in conveying what our imbued ignorance incurs upon others, regardless of intent or intelligence). I don't make any claim to being capable, but I do try to occasionally defend the American way, although I'm not rich, the experience here has been one that I'm most grateful for.

Those men & women in Afghanistan & Iraq today are defending modernity, as they did in Viet Nam, South Korea, The World Wars, the Cold War. They're making the ultimate sacrifice – some of them. I say give them a raise. Yea, I've read Gibbon.

Some ill advised mind pathos is encouraging me to post this. Hope the tags on the link work ... first time try with 7 years on the internet. That is posting a link without all the http sh#t.

Posted by: reader on April 3, 2004 2:27 PM

Well, since crusty old reader tanned our collective hides so to speak (with the exception of Messrs. Blowhard), and maybe rightly so, let me just say that I do love the west (both the western USA, and the concept).
There is a part of the west that is particularly appealing; and that's much too mild a word. In southeastern Utah there are two national parks, Arches National Monument and Canyonlands National Park that are not only spectacular, they are welcoming. I know that's a strange word for desert country, but it fits. If you ever get a chance, please go and see for yourself. Both are easily accessible from the town of Moab, Utah.

Posted by: ricpic on April 3, 2004 2:50 PM

Well, as Freud reminded us, civilization does come with a few discontents. But there are plenty of places in America where you can get away from advertising for a little while. Day hiking and camping are good ways to avoid the blare of ads, wherever you are. Traveling to spots that relatively few tourists visit (like northeast Arizona) is another.

I could never take a good picture of the Grand Canyon. Frankly, the canyon was just too big for my camera, so I could never get that all-important sense of scale. Consequently, my photos always make the canyon look rather like a painted backdrop -- very flat. I fare much better with less spectacular sites.

ricpic, have you been to Capitol Reef National Park? It's one of my faves, and photographs very well.

Posted by: Tim Hulsey on April 3, 2004 3:50 PM

I wouldn't say the Gilcrease is the only reason to visit T-town - I've spent hours just wandering around the Philbrook and its neighborhood - but if you have the slightest bit of curiosity about the culture of the Natives we, um, displaced, the Gilcrease is an absolute must.

Posted by: CGHill on April 3, 2004 4:46 PM

Cowtown Pattie: To say that punk has no true musical instrument talent, in my opinion, is absurd! Punk rock has great intrumental parts and punk drummers are, in my opinion, some of the best in the world. I don't find it strange that punk has lasted so long. It's fast-paced, heavy and full of enthusiasm rock music. Sometimes I want to relax and enjoy softer harmonies and I listen to bossa nova music, but when I want something exciting and powerful there's nothing better than Offspring or Green Day.

Posted by: Rod on April 3, 2004 5:58 PM

FWIW, I second the opinions that have been circulating here about Arches, Canyonlands and Capital Reef. Gorgeous places. And driving between them's a treat too.(Shhh, don't let the mock-naive act fool ya: I've actually been to the area about a dozen times.)

It really is a bizarre question: why so much art out here is so kitschy, although I suppose there's no way of telling whether the percentage is higher than it is in any other category of art. But don't I remember D.H. Lawrence writing (during his Taos period) that the SW countryside is too big and beautiful for art? How can a painting or poem compete with what's right outside your front door? Something like that? I have responses like that myself in spectacular places. The Wife and I took a vacation once in New Zealand, and felt no urge whatsoever for the entire month to see a movie. How could any movie compare to ocean, sunsets, Land 'o' Lakes colors, etc? I do shoot a lot of photos in picturesque places, and of course they're all disappointments ...

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on April 4, 2004 1:09 AM

Tim - Capitol Reef: real bandito country, beautiful and forbidding.

Posted by: ricpic on April 4, 2004 8:24 AM

I think Huxley wrote about painting the tropics in the same way. No artist could do justice to whats allready there. Now to make the grubby English countryside beautiful, that takes talent!

-JL

Posted by: jleavitt on April 4, 2004 12:02 PM

Now to make the grubby English countryside beautiful, that takes talent!

Or sunshine.

I wouldn't say the Gilcrease is the only reason to visit T-town - I've spent hours just wandering around the Philbrook and its neighborhood ...

I was never much impressed with the Philbrook; it's a competent, fairly standard art museum, such as most medium-sized cities have nowadays. The neighborhood is super-rich, though. Plus, the Greater Tulsa metropolitan area has several world-class barbecue joints -- none of which are, to my knowledge, near the Philbrook.

I do shoot a lot of photos in picturesque places, and of course they're all disappointments ...

I do, too, but I like the way some of mine come out. I'm always on the lookout for craggy things, like rocks and trees. It'd be interesting to compare notes on this stuff ...

Posted by: Tim Hulsey on April 4, 2004 7:24 PM

Almost forgot: Some of my favorite photos are here.

Posted by: Tim Hulsey on April 4, 2004 7:35 PM






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