sculpture

Guest Blog Post, Jacob Oet: Why “Art” and “Serious” Should Get a Divorce

Jacob Oet

Jacob OetFor some people, “serious art” is a compound word. They say it with the most severe reverence that is usually reserved for funerals and graduation speeches. These are people who think that good art can’t be silly, or that silliness can’t be sincere or profound.

However, as any creator knows, art is entirely unpredictable and rule-breaking. Creating something good is like riding an endlessly bucking horse; if the artist wishes to ride any distance without falling off, they must learn to adapt to the horse’s movement.

Mediocre art is very easy to identify; it feels unnatural, restrained, sedated, in chains. A horse that doesn’t buck will never go anywhere interesting. It’s more like taking a pony in a circle at an amusement park.

For critics, there is little worse than making the wrong distinction between good and bad: mediocre art is sincere, however poorly executed; bad art is always insincere. While mediocre artists give us clichés and flat soda, they are not as dangerous as “serious art” snobs.

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“Silly or serious” is not a dichotomy. Attend a wedding reception to see this in action; watch the bride and groom, hours after making “the most important decision of their lives,” get drunk. Watch their parents get drunk and start reminiscing about baby moments. Also, consider sex, one of the silliest acts. Intercourse is the only time when it is interesting and enjoyable to repeat the same motion hundreds of times, time and again. Yet this is what allows the human race to continue.

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“Silly or serious” is not a dichotomy. When evaluating art, one must treat “silly” and “serious” as the primary colors of any good work. The mark of a brilliant artist is the ability to be both silly and serious.

This appears in all genres of art, and I’m going to take you through music, literature, and unframed art with such examples as Mozart, Lewis Carroll, YouTube, and Futurama.

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I love Mozart. I love the calm-before-the-storm-iness of Mozart. I love the crystalline confidence of his scales. I love the catch of his melodies. I especially love how Mozart mixes silly and serious.

Mozart’s canon “Leck Mich Im Arsch” (literally, “lick me in the ass”), is one of my favorite examples of how silly and serious can work together to produce art that is unquestionably brilliant, even if it does make you giggle. Just think that without these lyrics, this would sound like a solemn ode to brotherhood.

Another of my favorite Mozart moments is from his final opera The Magic Flute. In one of Mozart’s most cheerful, upbeat, and memorable pieces, the Queen of Night asks her daughter to murder Sarastro, while exercising insane vocal techniques that singers have to dedicate their lives to attain. It’s a funny song, because the seriousness of the lyrics clash with the flowing lightness of the tune.

The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart,

Death and despair flame about me!

If Sarastro does not through you feel

The pain of death,

Then you will be my daughter nevermore.

It’s a scary song; listening to it, I get chills. And it’s a song that gets me through the day, one I love to sing over and over, under my breath, everywhere I go.

It’s not just the mixing of silly and sincere that makes these pieces great; it’s the undeniable humanity and sincerity of the music.

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Now consider Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” Its linguistic brilliance and inventiveness is first class, as the beauty isn’t in the meaning so much as in the way the plot is actually understandable, despite the strangeness of its language. The atmospheric brilliance of the first stanza is inimitable:

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

Its specific nonspecific language allows us to imagine and feel anything, depending on how we enter the poem. Many would write this poem off as silly. Yes, it is silly, but I find serious and sincere qualities in its retelling of the hero’s journey. It is a metaphor for triumph over any conflict in our lives.

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There is also the problem of unframed art. Some people tend to think that art must present itself as art, and that only certain kinds of art exist. Music, poetry, theater, painting, sculpture, etc… What about TV shows? What about YouTube videos?

This YouTube video by user wendyvainity seems at first to be nothing but nightmare fuel, with dogs. Here is a full synopsis of the video: two dogs sing an auto-tuned song about being dogs while the hairs on their coats grow incredibly long and then shrink back into their body; they jump over each other, and then they jump over what is probably the River Styx. Even on the other side of the river, they keep singing, and their hairs keep growing and shrinking back. Yes, I’d say nightmare fuel with dogs is a pretty accurate term, but—wendyvainity’s video also engages the absurd and the nonsensical to speak about (or at least prime in our unconscious minds) mortality, change, identity, fate, self-consciousness, and the possibility of real connection. Oddly enough, it reminds me a lot of Beckett.

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The animated sci-fi comedy show Futurama has proven itself capable of genius, but what really makes some of the episodes “art” is the show’s commitment to sincerity. Take for example my favorite episode, “Jurassic Bark.” The episode is a perfect blend of silliness and seriousness.

For those who are not familiar with Futurama, the premise of the show is that Fry, a loser pizza delivery boy living at the turn of the 21st century, accidentally gets cryonized until the year 3000, and must adapt to his new life. A common theme is Fry’s attempting to reconcile his past life with his current existence, and the possibility of his own insignificance.

Why is “Jurassic Bark” such a brilliant episode? Because it confronts cynicism with sincerity.

Here is a brief summary of “Jurassic Bark”: A museum in New New York digs up the remnants of the pizza restaurant that employed Fry in the 20th century. In the exhibit, Fry finds the fossilized body of his old dog, Seymour. After making a show of protesting in front of the museum, Fry gets to keep his fossilized dog. Fry’s mad scientist boss, Professor Farnsworth, says that he can bring the dog back to life. However, Fry’s best friend, Bender, gets jealous and upset with Fry for spending so much time preparing for the dog’s revival.

The episode alternates between Fry’s preparation for Seymour’s arrival in the present, and flashbacks of the history of Fry’s experience with his dog. The flashbacks start with their first meeting, when Fry gets a prank pizza order and shares the unpaid-for pizza with the starved dog in an alley, who follows Fry home. The flashbacks culminate in Fry’s cryonization and the dog’s subsequent search for Fry.

Fry: “I have a pizza here for Seymour Asses.”

Man at Delivery Address: “There isn’t anybody by that name here. Or anywhere. I hope in time you realize how stupid you are.”

Fry: “I wouldn’t count on it.”

At the end of the episode, learning that the dog lived for twelve years after Fry got cryonized, Fry succumbs to the contagious cynicism of his coworkers, and decides, for the first time in his life, to be ‘emotionally mature’ and to let his dog stay dead. The last lines of the episode (as given by IMDB) are:

Fry: I had Seymour ‘till he was three. That’s when I knew him, and that’s when I loved him… I’ll never forget him…

[Picks up the fossil and looks into its apparent eyes]

Fry: But he forgot me a long, long time ago…

But the episode doesn’t end there. The episode ends with a montage of the twelve years Seymour spent waiting in front of the pizzeria for Fry’s return, accompanied by a beautifully sung rendition of “I Will Wait for You” from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Good writers are deliberate, and every detail in “Jurassic Bark” is necessary to the episode and has some poetic value. I am going to offer a few of the most striking motifs, and some parts of the episode that I think embody them. As a warning to the reader, many of these examples are extremely specific and require a familiarity with the tropes and characters of Futurama:

The buried past is still alive in some form: fossilized Seymour, flashbacks… False emotional showiness: Bender the magician, Leela dramatically stripping and running to the lava, Bender emerging from the floor like a volcano, Bender’s robot dog… Cynicism as a destructive force: Bender’s throwing the fossil into the lava, Fry’s parents ignoring Seymour’s barking at Fry’s cryonized body, Fry’s ultimate decision not to recover Seymour… Cynicism as learned behavior: Fry is Bender’s apprentice, Fry’s ultimate decision… Sincerity as something frowned upon: the crew’s lighthearted scorn of Fry’s three-day dance-protest to get his dog from the museum, Bender beating up Zoidberg after Zoidberg explains Bender’s magic trick to the audience, Bender choosing to believe that Fry’s emotions are fake and that Fry is only acting that way to make Bender feel bad… Sincere connection as a rare and valuable ideal: Seymour is weak at first but grows healthy when fed and given love, Fry is only happy when with Seymour, Fry and Seymour are lonely and outcast but fill a void in each other’s lives, symbolized by their ability to sing together “Walking on Sunshine”…

Many viewers, angered by their own emotional responses to the episode, have complained that the ending of “Jurassic Bark” is manipulative, and rightly so; like all great stories, we are tricked into feeling emotion for people that don’t exist and the decisions they make. Where the objectors are wrong, however, is in denouncing this manipulation. Yes, we are tricked, as many great writers have tricked us in the past. We are tricked into first believing that Fry is making the right decision (a triumph for cynicism), and then shown that his dog never stopped believing and just kept waiting. In the end, moved to tears and anger as many viewers are, we ourselves are the triumph of sincerity.

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So. What’s the takeaway? Why is any of this important?

Silliness is the most underrated aspect of art.

More than anything, sincerity is what counts.

Art doesn’t have to be serious to make you a better person.

If you can be a silly genius, more power to you.

A Visit to the Barnhart Studio

Superstition Review

Barnhart Studio, a castle of metal and cinderblock, is tucked into a Mesa residential area. When I ring the doorbell, an unassuming man in a t-shirt opens the door: William Barnhart.

After a brief introduction, I am given a tour of the studio. William starts from the foundation of the building. From the tile work on the bathroom walls to the welding on the doors, most of the fixtures in the building are made from recycled materials, and they are all William Barnhart’s handiwork.

The very studio where William works is a reminder that art sometimes requires more than a table and chisel or paintbrush. The studio resembles a mechanic’s garage, a zone under construction, where a plaster sculpture waits to be completed. When I ask how long it takes to finish a project, William says, “It takes as long as it takes.” He shows me the swinging cranes that lift heavy materials, the giant fan he traded a painting for, and a room he is working on.

We walk and talk, and then we sit down in his office and talk about his work and about art in general. The following is a recreation of part of our conversation:

Superstition Review: Have you worked with art galleries?

William Barnhart: I did for a time, but not anymore. Art galleries insulate the artist from the clients, because if the client and the artist are communicating, there really is no need for the art gallery. I like the communication with my clients. I can put my studio down anywhere, and my clients will come to me.

SR: That’s true, you have an actual client-artist relationship. What kind of mediums and materials do you work with?

WB: I do prints, paintings, sculpture. I like working with bronze, making sculptures. You know, bronze, it’ll be around for generations.

SR: I read that the sculpture you recently finished has gold on it. Do you think the value of the materials you use adds something to your work?

WB: I definitely want to use quality materials in my work. It’s not necessarily the value of the materials but the quality of them.

SR: I know some artists try to make social commentary with their art. What would you say is the message you are trying to convey with your art?

WB: Social commentary is definitely not the focus of my work. I want my art to be universal, to transcend the bounds of time. It’s more about relationship issues, about human emotions and the drama of the figure. It’s about the human experience.

We discuss other things, such as his creative process and why he chose that particular area to place his studio. But when I take leave of William Barnhart, print-maker, designer, painter, sculptor—with “more stripes than the tigers,” to use his words—what lingers most in my mind is the image of the high-domed building, the living space, the vibrant place of craft that is itself a work of art.

For more information about William Barnhart’s studio and his work, visit his website.

 

Forthcoming: Michael Velliquette

Samantha Allen
Michael Velliquette

What many artists do with paint and canvas and clay Madison-based artist Michael Velliquette does with paper. The results are spectacular. Using strips of brilliantly colored, often hand-painted paper, Velliquette creates complex three dimensional installations that draw the eye with bold geometric shapes and intricate feathered textures. University of Wisconsin’s Lawton Gallery compares his work to the religious symbolism of “a culture devoted to the worship of vivid hues and complex patterning,” while a New York Times article describes it as both “shrinelike” and “reminiscent of party decorations and grade school art projects.” His paper sculptures are deeply evocative of a spiritual experience informed by the tradition of sacred objects, such as masks and icons and totems. Indeed, it is not hard to imagine the installations of his recent exhibit, “ChromaSouls” at the Haggery Museum in Milwaukee as the real idols of a brightly-hued pantheon.

Velliquette’s evocation of sacred relics is all part of his deeper message. While his work does indeed reflect the trans-cultural practice of what he calls “devotional ornamentation,” his paper sculptures are also a direct response to the current cultural and economic environment. Describing his work from 2010-2011, Velliquette states that “In times of crisis, people often turn to religion and faith…As the country was drawing deeper into recession, everything I was hearing in the media was about shortage and scarcity. I wanted my work to express abundance and exuberance, and for the viewer to experience an aesthetic of plenitude.” With its stunning complexity of line, color, shape, and pattern, this is a goal that Velliquette’s work has unarguably achieved.

Read more about Michael Velliquette’s work at Hand Eye Magazine. Visit his website here.

You can purchase the book Lairs of the Unconscious, a survey of Velliquette’s work here.

Superstition Review is thrilled to feature Michael’s work in Issue 8, which will launch in December 2011.

 

Launch of Issue 7: Art

Superstition Review

Superstition Review Issue 7 has launched and to celebrate we will be featuring blog posts about our artists and authors. To kick off launch week we will be highlighting a few of the talented artists who are featured in Issue 7.

Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 15-year-old artist and photographer who won the National Geographic Kids Photography Contest and the World Photography Organization’s Photomonth Youth award in 2010. She was the only person from the UK to be placed in National Geographic’s See The Bigger Picture Photography Competition and the youngest person to be exhibited with Charnwood Art’s Vision 09 exhibition. She has had her photography exhibited around the world in galleries in Europe, Asia and America and has been showcased in many magazines including the most popular children’s magazine in the world, NG Kids. View her photography featured in issue 7. Eleanor Bennett’s Website

Christy Puetz uses beadwork as her main medium. Her 3-dimensional beaded forms have surfaces covered with colorful, organic patterns. Her current work focuses on shape-shifting. The work subtly addresses the issues of the different faces we each put forth given our current surroundings and the eventual effect it has on who we become as a whole – a conglomeration of parts of different creatures. She uses taxidermy animal forms and transforms them into creatures, not yet in existence, but in the process of changing form, color, and purpose. View her creations in issue 7. Christy Puetz’s Website

Cyndy Carstens’ paintings of expansive skies & infinite distances represent an ultimate freedom of the soul grounded by images beckoning sensations of breath & struggles, rest & trials. Subject matter fluctuates between the recognizable & the abstract using color & texture to move the eye across a horizon of musical notes singing of peace and harmony. Carstens’ paintings can be found in private & corporate collections across the U.S. & Canada. Her work has been featured in many exhibitions including Manhattan Arts International’s “The Healing Power of Art” (New York, NY) and most recently has been honored with an Artist of Distinction Award & representation from Stillpoint Gallery of Brunswick, ME. View her painting, “Solitude” in issue 7. Cyndy Carstens’s Website

Sabrina Peros is an emerging artist in Phoenix, AZ. Ms. Peros began drawing and painting at a young age, eventually studying and graduating from The School of Visual Arts (New York) with a BFA in 2002. Some of her highlights include Featured Artist of the Month at The Paper Heart Gallery, Phoenix, Mills Pond House Gallery, St. James, NY, and resident artist at Space 55, Phoenix. View her four paintings featured in issue 7. Sabrina Peros’s Website

William D. Hicks is a writer who lives in Chicago, Illinois. His poetry appears in LITSNACK, Amaranthine Muses, Highland Park Poetry, Cannoli Pie Magazine, Outburst Magazine, The Legendary, Horizon Magazine, Breadcrumb Sins, Inwood Indiana Literary Magazine, The Short Humour Site (UK), The Four Cornered Universe, Save the Last Stall for Me and Mosaic. Cover art is on The Blank Page Handbook and Anti-Poetry. View his photographs in issue 7.

 

 

The full magazine with featured art and artists can be found here. Check back tomorrow to read about the fiction authors featured in Issue 7.

Meet the Interns: Michaela Stephens, Submissions Coordinator

Superstition Review

Michaela Stephens is a senior majoring in Literature, Writing, and Film with a Creative Writing concentration.

Superstition Review: What is your position with Superstition Review and what are your responsibilities?

Michaela Stephens: I am the Submissions Coordinator. My job is to log in to our submissions and contributor spreadsheets information about…surprise, submissions and contributions! I post the work to the correct discussion board for the editors to read and then log their verdicts into the spreadsheet. I also notify submitters if their submissions did not conform to our guidelines. (Yes, I’m the bad guy who sends form letters.)

SR: How did you hear about Superstition Review and what made you decide to get involved?

MS: One of my coworkers in the Writing Center was interning with Superstition Review and she talked about what she was doing a fair amount. I decided I wanted to get involved because it sounded like it would be good experience and a very helpful addition to my resume. Also, I thought it might be very interesting.

SR: What are you hoping to take away from your Superstition Review experience?

MS: I want to take away a thorough knowledge of how the publishing world works and why things are done the way they are.

SR: Describe one of your favorite literary or artistic works.

MS: Only one? You want to ask a bibliophile to describe just one of her favorite literary works? Impossible! I cannot do it! I cannot choose only one!

Bible, Book of Mormon, Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, L. M. Montgomery, Mark Twain, George Elliot, Orson Scott Card, etc.

SR: What are you currently reading?

MS: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I haven’t had enough exposure to Dickens.

SR: Who would be the Superstition Review contributor of your dreams?

MS: Orson Scott Card. His stories are very psychological, but also very accessible.

SR: Do you write or create art? What are you currently working on?

MS: For the last few years I’ve been predominately a writer, but I do have an artistic strain as well. I did pretty well in a sculpture class I took in Austin, Texas, and I still have a mask project hanging on my wall that I made for that.

Right now, I am working on a piece of genre fiction about a spoiled prince who has to marry someone from a specific town or he won’t inherit the kingdom.

SR: Besides interning for Superstition Review, how do you spend your time?

MS: Doing homework, working at the Polytechnic Writing Center, blogging, reading, reading, reading. Throw in weekly cub scout den meetings, a visit to the temple, church attendance, church choir, and you’ve gotten a picture of most of my time.

SR: What is your favorite mode of relaxation?

MS: Undoubtedly reading, but after sitting down at the computer all day it is hard to sit and read some more, so then I either go running or I go for a walk with my husband.

SR: Where do you see yourself in ten years?

MS: I see myself as a published author of several novels, and a professional organizer. If children don’t come. If children come, I’ll be a stay-at-home mom who scribbles away in the early morning hours.