Pythagorean Meme (original)

I feel like there is so much more that can be done with cubism, and optical illusions. It seems like artists of the 20th century—in western worlds at least—allowed themselves to get lazy on creativity, imagination, and innovation. As it always seems to throughout the ages, I think art got institutionalized by elite tastes in the 20th century up to now here in the 21st century. 

I use the term “elite tastes” because it’s more accurate than the 19th century term “bourgeois tastes.” The term bourgeois comes from Marxism which negatively frames entrepreneurs, small business owners, and non-elite class libertarians. Most of us alive today have grown up in a world that has been manufactured by Marxist oriented agendas because of an elite, government, corporate, political, ruling class. I say that because of the current, primary, global monetary system that has evolved from the Federal Reserve. 

The Federal Reserve was created because of a few destabilizing events that occurred a few years after the beginning of the 20th century, one of which was the Panic of 1907 from which culminated because of an earthquake that occurred in San Francisco in 1906. Deposits were unavailable for weeks while money was needed for an economic boom.

The Federal Reserve was formed in 1913 by bankers, headed by J.P. Morgan, and political authorities in the United States Senate at the time to remedy businesses and shortages and lack of access to money. This is why I say that it was the first major tool of socialism for elites, bankers, politicians, and other titans of the time. It was formed to bail out banks, industries, and commerce. While it helped to stabilize the economy for smaller businesses too, its main purpose was to create an institution—a socialized insurance policy—against failure for elites. 

So this has been going on for longer than a hundred years here in America, creating a permanent class of politicians who merely revolve through doors of banking, politicking, war-making, and sausage making. In summary, we have had a class of royalty under “capitalist” monikers, something the founders of the US fought to free itself from British Royal rule.

I wrote the last three paragraphs to set the context in which art in America has developed. Artists have never been narrated as being titans of finance, or savvy businessmen. Artists have always been subordinate to elite, ruling classes, whether if it was being a scribe in ancient Egypt, a court painter in Victorian Europe, or an intelligence-propaganda asset of the political tyranny of the CIA.

It’s especially hard for artists to get a foot in the world today because we aren’t creating anything excessively dopamine stimulating, such as porn (I realize some are); anything convenient and immediately gratifying like a sugar-carb permeated snack; or socially useful like an iPhone, which provides a handheld desktop for an endless amount of entertainment, guidance, media-making and editing, business, or social media apps. 

In order for artists in America to really succeed with a self-sustaining, independence supporting income, we have to be connected to and socially pleasing to wealthy collectors, politicians, bankers, gallery owners, most all of whom are left-leaning. I note here a phenomenon of right-leaning politics to be less imaginative, daring, and innovative in the arts. I think that’s because conservatives are naturally rule and law abiding, whereas liberals tend to be more free with breaking rules.

I conclude this blog by saying the cliche that only one percent of artists “make it” with their careers as artists because of this highly selective, socialized, hand-picked world of western art. Most everyone is in debt to the debt making machine of Washington and its magical acts of fiduciary conned-fidence. At its core, money is what really, really matters to most people. And art is a fleeting oddity that passes by one’s scrolling through digital media on a handheld device. It’s hardly even an entertaining pleasure to most people anymore. 

I titled this piece Pythagorean Meme because of its geometric shapes. They look like abstract housing structures on a landscape. The idea echoes the Bauhaus architectural school as well as mortgages for housing and the FDIC. I used the word meme in the title because I didn’t want to use the word dream. Dream is overly used in my opinion, but it still communicates so much about our illusion based world that’s relevant. So I sublimated it with an associated rhyming word.

As you may know, I’ve been fascinated with optical illusion art for the last few years at least. I’ve always loved the Bauhaus artists and philosophies of art. The word bauhaus has meaning to me because it contains the word house in its German form, and housing, home, security, family, mortgaging, financing, etc. are all associated with it. Art is housed by housing, shelter, and environmentally protecting structures. This recent style of art is enabling me to explore more of that and expand upon it with my own vision. Theo Van Doesburg is an inspiration, as well as Oscar Reutersvard.