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California State University, Dominguez Hills
University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Soka University Japan - Transcend Art and Peace
Created: September 20, 2002
Latest Update: September 20, 2002
jeannecurran@habermas.org
takata@uwp.edu

Theory and Life Experiences:
Art with Patrick Graham

Site Copyright: Jeanne Curran and Susan R. Takata and Individual Authors, September 2002.
"Fair use" encouraged.

A new $200 million dollar cathedral has just opened in Los Angeles. To the Glory of God? In this painting I have attempted to combine the spirit of Patrick Graham's philosophy of painting and art and the death of art and the rediscovery of painting with the philosophical and social theories we have been discussing of the tension between the individual and the community, intimacy and solidarity, authenticity and normative prescription, the silence of denial and the poverty of tradition unexamined.

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. I think Patrick Graham would agree with that, for that is how he seems to define the the painting that comes from an unexamined history of art. As shallow technique with nothing real to say. For more on Patrick Graham's definition of art and painting and some revealing images of his work, see Painting Is Dead: Rediscovering Painting.

Last week we began a discussion of the human need for solidarity, for community, maybe it would be better to say tribe. We used all three of those terms last week. Humans are social. The tension between the individual and the community seems to be integral to our nature. We need to be free to follow our own creativity, our own sense of values and beliefs to achieve what we can for all of us, for the species as a whole and our future. But we need at the same time to preserve that tribe or the neighborhood or the social group that permits sufficient solidarity to provide the communal infrastructure. Both the individual and the group must be made strong. Both must survive.

I'm going to discuss the current conservative term "family values" along with solidarity and belonging in general, and how those needs affect the sstructuere we have given to our society, how they affect us. Patrick Graham's art helps me do that, and so I will accompanying these notes with a discussion of his art. Not art criticism. For that I am not qualified. But an appreciation of what art offers us as a means of expressing the harm we suffer, the role that plays in social justice, and ways to relieve that harm and suffering. . . .

I'm also going to discuss the ddifficult topic of love and marriage and values of intimacy in relationships. Here I want to contrast intimacy with dependency, and solidarity with denial.

Pat and Arnold and I are in Santa Barbara on Saturday. So I won't get to this till Sunday. Sorry. jeanne