Dennis Cass Wants You To Be More Awesome

A reader writes:

I would like to know why I always discount my efforts – I have “real” artwork (that I don’t seem to get around to doing much) and then I have “non-art” that I mess around with and do nearly every day. I tell people it’s a matter of intent and materials – just goofing around with whatever is at hand doesn’t cut it – I can’t show or sell the everyday stuff – only the serious art counts. Am I right or am I wrong?

I’m glad I don’t have examples of your work to cloud the issue. Because it doesn’t matter if your “real” artwork is a collection of fine (but neglected) oils and your “non-art” is macaroni glued to construction paper. What’s happening here is all about attitudes and beliefs.

The critical part of your mind thinks like this:

Your “real” art is up there with the hawks and the orcas. Your “non-” art is down there with the plants and the plankton.

You have these attitudes and beliefs because you grew up with parents, teachers, critics, the Evil Mainstream Media, etc. who feel more comfortable when culture is categorized into high and low, good and bad.

The artistic part of your mind, however, thinks like this:

In this context your “real” art and your “non-” art aren’t so easy to judge. Everything’s connected and related and somehow necessary. What it all means is up to you.

Is it better to be a maned goose or sedge? I don’t know. Maned geese are on top, but sedge is awfully central. Even daphnia and decayed matter—lowly as they are—can lay claim to getting good eat-and-be-eaten action.

Both the “food chain” and “food web” models of culture have their merits, but as someone who used to make a living as a critic, I can testify to how limiting the food chain mentality is. It’s hard to see the true potential of your work if you’re constantly putting things into categories.

The answer for you might be to stop goofing off and get serious, but let me ask you this:

What would happen if you stopped dismissing your “non-art” as “non-” and started taking it seriously? Where would you want to take it? How would you get it there?

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

Dana Stevens of Slate nicely sums up what Joaquin Phoenix’s “public decompensation” (decomposition?) is all about:

There are multiple theories as to what Phoenix’s public decompensation is all about. (He announced in October that he was giving up acting for good to pursue a career as a musician and has since had one disastrous live show in which he rapped inaudibly and fell off the stage.) He could be spiraling down into alcohol or drug addiction—the actor has done a stint in rehab in the past. He could be mentally ill. Or the whole thing could be an elaborate hoax, staged with the help of his friend and brother-in-law Casey Affleck, who’s planning to direct a documentary that’s ostensibly about Phoenix’s transition from acting to rapping but will (according to theory No. 3) turn out to be the chronicle of an Andy Kaufman-style piece of performance art.

I hope it’s theory No. 3 because I do love me a good art project. There is something about that level of commitment to an idea. (This is also the theme of one of my favorite movies in recent years The Prestige.)

I also love the uneasiness that it creates in the audience. If he’s joking, then why am I not really laughing? If he’s not joking, then why do I find this all so funny?

Two years ago, I envisioned this website an art project. I decided against it because my mandate is to help people. (If I’m the fake headmaster of some kind of real/not-real Institute for Awesome Studies, then it’s about me not you.) Still, even thinking about DCWYTMBA in that way expanded my horizons.

Here is an exercise for you:

Ask yourself what your current project would look like if you erased the boundaries between art and artist and audience and turned it all into one crazy, big-ass THING. How might you go about the work differently? What kind of character or personae might you develop? How would that personae free you up? How would that personae limit you?

And then the most important question of all:

How far would you have to take your idea in order to transcend the ordinary?