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Saturday, July 23, 2011

Art is Ugly

"Angry Bitch" Mixed Media on Board (12x12)
Not all art is good. Not all art is pretty. Sometimes it just is. You can let it live or you can toss it out.  Who knows what the fate of this piece will be.  I surely don't. 

If you're interested, click read more to see the text:

After a year + 5 I’ve been granted reprieve. 

A quick right then left from desperation to redemption. 
A light at the end of the tunnel and I wonder…if…I am…
The punchline for the oncoming train.  

First elation…disbelief and then…Relief
But now? ANGER. Like I skipped my Kubler-Ross. 
A grief incomplete
A redemption not so…sweet. 
More like sellout than salvation…
A bargain with the devil to fill my belly and roof my head
Doing my best Penelope Pitstop across the tracks of acceptable life. 
Acquiescing to the left brain ego that counts 1...2...3...
Calculating rate of change on the exponent of my lost nerve.  

So now…ANGER…a rage at my inner soul…my weak resolve.
Another working stiff doing my best Temple Grandin elliptic…
Stepping…stepping peacefully to a stun and slit throat. 
Fuck. Fuck me. Off to work I go. ©2011 Cindy K. Shaw All Rights Reserved

6 comments:

Snowbrush said...

Art is certainly more meaningful if I know the artist's intention, but in most art, I don't, so if the art is ugly, I get nothing from it.

Cindy said...

I more in the camp that the experience of the viewer is more important than the intention of the artist. What moves me when I am working may have nothing to do with why someone is drawn to one of my pieces. My last solo show had 25 pieces up and virtually everyone had a different favorite. No one's description of what helped them connect to their favorite was remotely similar to how I connected to it. That is what I most like about art even when it is ugly, even when it sucks.

LeQuan said...

"beauty is in the eye of the beholder." i actually really like this piece.

Snowbrush said...

I watched the movie, "Basquiat" this weekend, and the art in this post reminds me of something he would have done.

Cindy said...

I love Basquiat. I see the point you make about the similarity, though my writing is without the perseveration present in his work. I've seen the documentary on Basquiat, but not the movie. The doc completely glosses over his schizophrenia. Does the movie?

Snowbrush said...

You wouldn't even know from the movie that he had a mental illness, although his heroin addiction came up a few times.