Admittedly, the title of this post has less to do with the subject matter than I desire to shoehorn a cute title into most of the things I do. But I have been meditating on the nature of art recently, most especially because of a piece by Michael Helms, which you cannot see here, because the powers that be here at DA saw fit to remove it. Said work was judged to have artistic merit incommensurate with the controversy, potential or manifest, that attended upon it's subject matter, so it had to go. I was fond of the work, which I found beautiful and thought-provoking, and in keeping with the highest traditions of good art, so naturally I was disappointed. But what got me thinking was not that DA management disagreed with me -- for all I know they do not -- but that they decided that this particular artwork was not worth supporting or defending, no matter what they thought of its esthetic value. What was, or could be, behind such a decision? The trivial answer must allow for purely personal reasons such as individual taste, personal pique, too much coffee or not enough, having a less than stellar day. But allow me to pose the question in the abstract, and consider it corporately and not merely individually. And to do that, I should start with the concept of Art itself; what it is, and where it comes from.

Considering what Art is, we must confront the fact that if it could be precisely defined in words, it would not need to exist. Art and language would then be purely redundant and whether we resorted to one or the other would turn or mechanical considerations like efficiency or semantic clarity. But it does not, because Art [in which I include visual, musical, dance etc] exists to communicate concepts and feelings for which language is insufficient; each exists in relation to and overlapping with the other but each has a purpose which is largely its own, and each is defined on its own terms, the expression of which in other forms is at best a palimpsest.

Considering where Art comes from: individually, it occupies the liminal space between imagination, reality, and talent. Socially, it occupies the liminal space between the artist, the perceiver, and the society that both inhabit. Inherent in the creation of Art is tension: the individual tension between the artist's perception of reality, their imagination, and their ability to express via their craft; the social tension between the artist, their audience, and the larger community. Fundamental to the purpose of Art is communication; to be Art, art must be shared and sharable.

Thus the concept of what Art is, along with the art itself, arises not just from the artist but, as importantly, from the social fabric of the society the artist inhabits. Art is supported and informed by the complex weave of shared concepts, symbols, ideals, mores, modes, beliefs, traditions, and worldview that define and circumscribe a society. Good art reaches us, moves and challenges us, on its own terms through the shared social constructs that connect us with the artist. Bad (or at least inadequate) art requires documentation: copious notes to explain what it means, how we should feel about it, and why it matters. (As a rule, if someone has to explain why an artwork matters, it probably doesn't. This is of course is distinct from helping people develop a greater understanding of, and appreciation for, Art.) Ugly art sets out to offend, which is the easiest, least constructive, and most puerile purpose art can descend to.

Thus, to extent that the definition of Art is thought to be held only by the individual and not also by the social consciousness, it loses it's ability to motivate, challenge, or transform. Not only does the idea that "art is whatever I say it is" absolve the artist of trying to communicate with us, it absolves us from trying to listen or perceive. Taken to the extreme, the individualist view in effect converts all art into "bad" art. Or to put it another way: if everything can be art, nothing is art.

Two conclusions are therefore apparent: first, bureaucracies, which are all about rules (expressed in language), cannot define or judge what is Art and what is not; they can only circumscribe its content. Second, the notion that "art is whatever I say it is" is both insufficient and incorrect because it denies the social aspect and therefore amputates both the necessary tension for Art's creation and context for it's expression.

This matters because together these forces undermine and fragment a society's concept of what constitutes Art, and when a society begins to lose its shared, inhered concept of what Art is, it tends to resort to bureaucratic solutions. As a result, art itself tends to become bureaucratized. The bureaucratized approach to Art cannot support good art or defend us from ugly art but treats all art as if it were bad, slathering an egalitarian gloss over all and lubricating Art's descent to the lowest common denominator.

This is not just a matter of creating a great deal of saccharine "popular" art. In effect, this process decapitates the art world and changes the essential dynamic between the artist and his audience. Impelled by the need to communicate but cast loose the social weave that would allow them to do so effectively, all too many artists, all too much of the time, in the name of "artistic freedom" resort to the one thing that will always get through: Ugly. To shock, to offend, to be controversial or "transgressive" becomes not a means to an end, but an end in itself. (N.B.: Artistic freedom, properly understood, is the freedom to express oneself to engage and challenge society, not to ignore it or treat it as irrelevant or offend it for the sake of offending it.)

Such antics inevitably provoke a bureaucratic response, but bureaucrats can no more define the limits of what is offensive than they can define what is Art. Inherent in the individualist mindset is not only the right to offend, but the right to be offended -- by anything, at any time. So bureaucracies, like the one here at DA, are constantly buffeted by people asserting their right to be offended.

And therein lies the rub. In any society there are those who are tolerant, open-minded, and polite and those who are the opposite. In the willy-nilly-anything-goes view of the world, the former tend to act as individuals while the latter act as a collective. They act as a collective not much because they are organized (though they may be), but because they make a great deal of noise and this noise is focused on the bureaucracies that control whatever it is that they are making noise about. The polite and tolerant act as individuals because the primacy of individuality denies them the sanction to criticize the rude or intolerant (whose opinions are accorded the courtesy of being treated as equally valid); or if they do, to do so in the same terms and by the same methods as their opponents. Such contests inevitably devolve to seeing who has the loudest bullhorns (sometimes literally) and everyone involved leaves deaf.

Meanwhile, the bureaucracy has the choice of listening to everyone (and letting the noise escalate), listening to no one (and telling everyone to shut up), or making up their own rules and that's generally what they do. Of course, such rules can neither be effectively stated or applied because of the fundamental mismatch between Art and language, and unfortunately the only metric readily available to judge their efficacy is the perceived noise level. Thus, any set of bureaucratic rules will inherently focus more on placating the offended than defending the tolerant. Further, the reactive nature of the bureaucracy ensures that, noise being what it is, a consistent or "fair" application of the rules will produce results that reflect the nonsensical and chaotic nature of the input. Thus do perfectly good and defensible artworks get banned one day but not the next, or when they are exhibited by some but not others.

But that is not what worries me. Art is a higher form of communication and its bureaucratization acts, I think, as a canary in a coal mine. When decisions about Art become wholly bureaucratic, society has lost its ability to recognize what Art is, and so communicate with it. When a society loses its ability to communicate through Art, it is because its members are so alienated from each other that they lack a common ground on which to meet. In effect, the social weave has frayed to the point where Art can no longer be supported -- it falls through. I fear that not long after, we all fall through with it.

C. Owen Johnson
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I achieved my own personal March of the 10,000 today, much more quickly and easily than Xenophon, and in fact, largely by sitting on my butt. But I am nonetheless most grateful, humbled, and slightly bemused.

10,000 page views -- I had not expected such a response in the 7 short weeks I have been active here. My heartfelt gratitude to each and everyone of you who chose to share my passion with me; and more than that to those who have taken the time to leave a comment or deemed me worth watching.

In a spirit of celebration, I am posting a Quartet Plus 1 of Tessa, doing one of the many things she does best. It is one of my favorite sets and this is it's first public exhibition.

Update: So I was a bit late with the new images of Betcee. Perhap you enjoyed savoring the anticipation. . . which is another was of saying I'm a slacker.

with all fond regards,

C. Owen Johnson
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Some people have asked about the story I alluded to behind the creation the "Buy Me" photos, so I've decided to address that here rather than individually, so those who may be interested need not ferret out the answer from scattered comments. Fair warning: it is not at all salacious and probably nowhere near as interesting as you may hope. It is even, I may say, rather pedantic. But I have pronounced pedantic tendencies -- it is, for better and/or worse, how I think -- so at the risk of drizzling gray tedium over much more pleasing suppositions, I will here relate exactly why I decided to create these images.

These photos were something of a departure for me, as I don't normally venture into fetish photography outside of a commercial context. But last week, a woman I work with told me about an ad she had seen that brought home to me some characteristics of our society and moved me to create these images.

In brief, our society exhibits 1) a fascination, bordering on an obsession, with the New, the Outré, the Shocking and/or Transgressive; and 2) a preoccupation, sometimes almost neurotic, with sexual and erotic concepts coupled with a prudish aversion to those concepts' frank expression. This condition, which I might call puritanical hedonism, causes considerable conflict. This conflict occurs not just between sectors of society but within individuals, where it all too often manifests itself in some very ill-considered (not to say amazingly dumb) ideas.

Nowhere is this more evident (at least in my view) than in advertising. The ad referred to, which was intended to sell shoes, I believe, involved a woman and a malamute: the woman had her foot up on a piece of furniture, displaying the product; her skirt hiked up to the hip to bare her raised, flexed and bent leg; and the malamute licking her exposed calf while the woman threw her head back in what we can only hope was a pose of faux ecstasy.

Now what immediately leapt to mind -- and I know I am not alone in this -- is that someone had concluded it was a good idea to promote bestiality to sell shoes. And not only that, but that someone was paid to come up with this idea and someone's corporate management decided to approve and execute it and someone else's corporate management to ultimately publish it. So this was not some one-off nutty idea by a foot fetishist with an unfortunate thing for dogs and women; it was a corporately approved and vetted concept considered not just appropriate for national circulation, but beneficial for the client and as reflecting well on the agency that created it.

How exactly could this happen?

Imagining myself (however speciously) in the position of the person assigned to come up with this ad, I see myself receiving a memo saying something like (in what I conceive to be the argot of the day): "Gotta sell some shoes. Kewl shoes! Gotta be edgy, hawt, Rad. Gimme ideas!"

Now, it being me, I would ponder a bit and suggest something like this: "OK, 2 women. Woman 1 has her foot up on a table, displaying the shoe. Woman 2 is kneeling on the table licking Woman 1's foot. Woman 2 is nude except for shoes, but posed so nothing really shows."

To me, such a concept is sexy, thought-provoking, memorable, and kind of sweet. It has some edge and I think it would satisfy the "hawt" requirement. But I can equally imagine the response: "2 girls? Naked? Like naked naked? Foot licking? Like Naked Lesbian foot worship? No waay!"
Me: "So what do you wanna do?" (Showing my flexibility.)
Them: "Gotta talk upstairs."
Eventually corporate response: "No nudity. NO lesbians. We'll get a dog. The dog will lick her leg. Her Leg -- not her foot. NO foot stuff."
Me: "The dog can't wear shoes. You'll only get one pair of shoes in the shot."
Them: "N/p. we'll work it."
And so… bestiality. Yeah, that's waay better than two normal every-day loving women sweetly engaging a bit of foot worship. Society is not ready for that. But bestiality? No problem. Green Lite. Go.
Me: "2-word 7-letter resignation note."

Admittedly, I am making this rather ungenerous exchange up out of whole cloth, but the fact remains that the ad in question was produced and did run, where I am quite sure that should I propose the photos I created for the self-same purpose, they would be rejected out of hand on the grounds of being to overtly sexual. Thus does puritanical hedonism result in rejecting perfectly usual, laudable, and not uncommon expressions of human desire in favor the truly perverse and disturbing; thus producing a wildly distorted vision of the Erotic, or, as in this case, a remarkably meretricious bit of advertising.

Or I could be wrong. If I have somehow created the next great shoe ad, you will read it here first.

C. Owen Johnson
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I think the time has come to post a few words here to express my appreciation for all the kind and thoughtful comments I have received and to make sure credit is given where credit is due. The response to my work here on Deviant Art has exceeded my expectations by a considerable margin, which is gratifying to say the least, but the credit for the images I produce lies for the most part with the women in the photos and not the person (me) who happened to push the button. There are many very gifted photographers out there but I would blush to count myself among their number.

My photographic technique is simple: I create a basic set, select one of the few basic lighting schemes I understand, and engage an exceptional woman to express herself freely within that environment. To the extent I have a gift, it is a knack of knowing who to work with; women who will make me look good rather than the other way around. So if you like these images, seek out the exceptional women who produced them and express your respectful gratitude.

Regarding the women themselves, allow me to give a better sense of my full meaning when I say they are exceptional. Beauty is not -- whatever the old adage says -- skin deep. Beauty has little to do with skin at all -- or with pleasing arrangement of features, or a specific set of bodily proportions. Beauty is first and foremost a mental activity: the exercise of intellect informed by character on physical features. Shallow people and those of modest mental gifts cannot achieve beauty, though some with an exceptional physique can be coached into a reasonable counterfeit of it.

So the first thing to understand about the women you see in my work is that they are very smart: several have doctorates; not a few have advanced degrees; and almost all are accomplished artists in their own right: photographers, painters, musicians, singers, writers, poets. They are much more that what society generally considers to be with the ambit of the misleading term "model".

It is these exceptional women who, through their great goodness, share with you and with me their sublime, inspiring, and challenging art. I am merely there to try and record it.

C. Owen Johnson
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