Postmodern sensibility is not just in the art world - it creeps through our daily lives. Today I ran across Time magazines article on Al Gore and his upcoming book The Assault on Reason. It is a discussion of the lack of critical thinking and forward looking political policies in our culture. Gore's position is that we no longer debate issues or reason our decisions. He asks, "Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" In the article Mr. Gore later makes reference to one of my heros "...To understand the final reason why the news marketplace of ideas dominated by television is so different from the one that emerged in the world dominated by the printing press, it is important to distinguish the quality of vividness experienced by television viewers from the "vividness" experienced by readers. Marshall McLuhan's description of television as a "cool" medium—as opposed to the "hot" medium of print—was hard for me to understand when I read it 40 years ago, because the source of "heat" in his metaphor is the mental work required in the alchemy of reading. But McLuhan was almost alone in recognizing that the passivity associated with watching television is at the expense of activity in parts of the brain associated with abstract thought, logic, and the reasoning process." Heat is the key to understanding - Mr. Gore succinctly describes it as mental work - active thought.

I think that McLuhan was right on the money with the idea of hot and cool media. Cool media is collage sensibility - reforming existent ideas into complex and self referential games - cut and paste - television - photoshop. It is a non-dialectical thought process - one that accepts the a priori idea and juxtaposes it among other a priori principles to endlessly rework style or technique without altering the underlying substance (for an example type in pachelbel canon on any search engine and watch the ensuing endless stylistic fabrications that ensue - how about some new fucking music please.) The critique juxtaposes one idea against the other never resolving or reinventing those ideas - only spinning further critique. It puts off the decision, it allows for desire, nothing is ever consummated. For instance in our art world - why do we continue to accept the idea that there can be no avante garde - that the principle of rebellion against formed aesthetic ideas is no longer viable? Why do we continue to believe in the concept of plurality when most of the work we see, talk about and make looks so similar? For a while actually questioning the idea of the POMO academy fell on deaf ears. POMOs argued that because they were critiquing the history of visual ideas it allowed them the right to claim that they were outside of that history - ie. PostModern. This position allowed them to remain outside of their own critique, permanantly unassailable, permanently youthful, permanent potential - an intellectual stance that I like to call the Michael Jackson Fallback. In this playground of pre-recorded ideas, stored on the DVR of POMO discourse - we keep experiencing inane reissues of tired ideas cleverly re-packaged and peppered with capriciousness. IN the old days this was called sophistry and it was meant as a slight.

Mr. Gore, ever the optimistic politician, goes on to say..."So the remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way—a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response." He is after all a politician and he wants answers. I am a struggling artist and not quite so optimistic about any of the answers. Too many of us in the AW are far too accepting of our place. The corporate infiltration of the art world - the Hollywooding of Chelsea - the branded schooling of certain types of artists - the top down model of aesthetic appreciation - all of this speaks of control by the few, a collusion of power and money, and a marginalization of creativity. We have all participated in this ridiculous world that autions paintings by Warhol for 71 million dollars (regardless of my reverence for Warhol I understand that this money market is pure fantasy.) For painters what is a "meaningful response" in the face of Chelsea's underhanded powerplays? One way is to take the hit, meld into the background and reason (paint) against POMO bit by bit, day by day at its weakest intellectual & visual points - Just as Mr. Gore has done with global warming and political argument. By discoursing on issues of real importance to painting - particularly abstraction - we chip away at the bastions of aesthetic control and develop a new discourse - one that might take us somewhere else. This series on Postmodernism is a meaningful response and it takes place here on the internet, because most of us can not afford to live, show and debate where the art is sold and displayed.

Mr. Gore actually says the truth about corporate control of the electronic public forum in no uncertain terms "...danger arises because there is, in most markets, a very small number of broadband network operators. These operators have the structural capacity to determine the way in which information is transmitted over the Internet and the speed with which it is delivered. And the present Internet network operators—principally large telephone and cable companies—have an economic incentive to extend their control over the physical infrastructure of the network to leverage control of Internet content. If they went about it in the wrong way, these companies could institute changes that have the effect of limiting the free flow of information over the Internet in a number of troubling ways." Mr. Gore could be describing the Chelsea gallery scene, the auction houses and the art fairs. Soon starter galleries will no longer be around - unable to survive in the super heated art money world- only those that can provide a farm system for the bigger venues will be allowed to exist and then only at the consent of the larger corporate galleries. And with the auction houses now investing in galleries - the independent gallerist is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Painting must be more than feeling, it must be thoughtful action as well. To accept what we are given without question, to accept the word of those who do not have our best interest at heart or to accept the remains of someone elses' bad ideas leaves us with no more room to move. Frank Stella said it best - what we need is working space - the space we free up to express our selves - the space we create to form our ideas - the space of dissent and new vision. It is not enough to paint a picture because we are able - we must open it to these times and spaces. As an abstractionist I am convinced of my freedom to paint my own ideas right there on the canvas in my own way. I am convinced of the hard won beauty of it - just as Matisse was of his work when he hung two paintings opposite his friend's sick bed in order to cheer him up. Artists are not different for difference's sake -we become different because we live with new problems, new experiences. We carry the same DNA as Michele or Tintoretto, Matisse or Picasso - which means we must carry our history and our humanity into the challenges we experience around us - we can not mine the past indefinitely, we must build into the future. If we don't we're Las Vegased - we wind up entertainers rather than artists.