What politics does to art

Taken in 2007, in early spring, in midtown at mid-day.

It kills it.

Politics kills art as surely as being riddled with bullets from a stolen submachine gun will kill a person. It does it totally, messily, and illicitly. It is the overkill of life. It is not to be borne.

That having been said, what does one do about the many accomplished political cartoonists, for example? Are they worthless? No. In fact, seeing a few cartoons each day rather than reading even the headlines in Google News would probably allow more artists to operate sanely and happily than not.

But then the question arises: Would the political cartoonists actually make more appealing art--which is to say, less depressing art in its subject matter--if politics were somehow to be removed from the daily notice of those artists?

Or possibly I'm getting to this: Would I be able to make more art--paint more, think about art more--if I totally avoided reading about politics?

Ed Koch he ain't

I believe that the answer is most assuredly yes. I mean, who really needs to have their soul depressed by knowing that the witless current mayor of New York City is claiming the Chechen Brothers planned to bomb Times Square next? There are some problems with that on every level, which I, as a native New Yorker but a former American (having renounced citizenship) will happily explain, below:

1. The FBI is purportedly said the Chechen Brothers planned to blow up New  York; one must, of course, wonder if that's their way of justifying the militarization of Boston's streets to catch one scrawny 19-year-old who was half-dead anyway. So that gets taken with a grain of salt, but not until one has used valuable brain space to process it.
2. "There was some information that they may have been intent on coming to New York, but not to continue what they were doing," (NYC Police Commissioner Ray) Kelly said yesterday, according to the New York Daily News. "Information that we received said something about partying or having a party ... It may have been words to the effect of coming to party in New York." Hmmm....either Kelly is right or the FBI is. Again, brain space needed to grapple with this. (Huffington Post)
3. Mayor Bloomberg is fanning the flames of terror by making much of the alleged plans of the alleged bombers to allegedly go to New York to allegedly wreak havoc and commit murder in Times Square. This by the same mayor who militarized New York's finest to deal with people camping out, Occupy Wall Street. This man is a buffoon, not in the same league with the late, great Ed Koch. Not even from the same planet. (I wonder how long Kelly will keep his job.)

Now it may be that this is depressing to me simply because I have a great love for New York City, so great that I felt guilt for living in Baltimore when the Twin Towers were demolished. I felt I had in some soul-deep way abandoned my people. Silly, of course: I had lived in Baltimore for several years. Still, my umbilical was firmly attached to the city of my birth, then, and even now.

New York's noisy Chinatown--still low-rise after all these years, and noisy--where Canal Street cuts through it taking traffic from Brooklyn to "the City."

Bush's league

But then we had Bush. And Bush's wars. And we had a feeling of horror driven by idiots like him to new levels. By gad, we had every rotten thing (wars and lies and wars....), and at the end of it, a monetary collapse that put the marginal livings of so many accomplished--but not famous--artists on the ropes.

How many artists in New York, who once made a marginal living drawing dross for publications for a relative pittance or setting up caricature stands in Central Park to earn some coins from tourists are bagging groceries now? Not that there's anything wrong with bagging groceries...except that when an artist does it, it both deprives an unskilled person of a job, and deprives humanity of the artworks that person might have produced. In short, it is precisely the sort of win-lose-lose situation Bush and his one-percenter cronies--of which Bloomberg is a major one--designed. They win, the population in general loses, and those who work in creative ways lose even bigger because the general population can no longer afford even minor works of art.

Bloomberg is to New York and its arts community as Bush was to American education; an unmitigated disaster. He has turned Manhattan from a place where journeyman artists (and writers and actors) could actually live (not easily, but it could be done, as I know from experience) to one where they can't even afford the blankets to sleep rough over subway gratings. He has turned it from a place vibrant with artful concepts into a sterile package for consumption by the international thieves--bankers, brokers, etc.--who have bought up ALL the housing to sell it to other schnooks for even more money. Until, of course, they pull out the rug, as George did nationally a year before he slunk back to the tumbleweed patch of Crawford, TX.

My stepdaughter, Julia, on a day only the sparrows wanted to hang around in Paley Park; spring monsoons had arrived. But the park is open even in winter.

I love New York

There is no real art in New York anymore. I wonder if there are any real people. Apparently, there were still a few on 9/11, because the city rebounded. New Yorkers don't take slaps in the face kindly, but they are kind in helping others recover from same. Bloomberg's New York is plastic, pre-fab, cookie-cutter...any pejorative you want to use.

I love New York. I really do. I love the dirt. I love the wind whistling up the granite canyons of old skyscrapers. I love the Paris boulevard feel of Park Avenue in midtown. I love the docks. I love the accents, all of them, native and foreign. I love the coffee shops. I love Paley Park, a vest-pocket park half a block from St. Thomas (Episcopal) Church, which I also love. Paley Park is sandwiched between skyscrapers, has a 2-story waterfall (man-made), sparrows and a coffee kiosk. On fine days virtually all year long. people sit at tiny tables under spindly trees, enjoying the water-softened hum of New York and a coffee and a bit of pastry, which most share with the sparrows. When I once hosted 14 Russian actors for four days in New York, that was their favorite place. They liked it even better than lunch at the Player's Club. They knew it was quintessentially New York, filled with New Yorkers doing New York things.

But I don't love what Bloomberg has done to it. Sterilized it. Militarized it. Bowdlerized it. Decommissioned it as a place where art is born.

I think I cannot read news any longer. Nothing drips from my brushes, and all that drips from my eyes are tears of loss.