Pop Life - personal reflection - (on a review of it)

"Pop Life deserves to be a hit, though, because it tries so hard to get the genie back into the bottle – to distil, as far as possible, a whole chapter of modern times in which a particular kind of art turned itself into pure commodity. " Laura Cumming, Observer Oct 4th

It was so pleasing to read this review. Sorry I haven't seen the exhibition, in the wrong continent, or right one depending on your location and desire to see the show. I was pleased with how, according to the review Pop Art was continued from the historically confirmed Pop Art period of Warhol to the present day Hirst's diamond encrusted skull. It felt good to finally see condensed in words how commodity and commercialism really have been something pervasive and present in the art works produced recently. Personally as an artist I have always found the pressure to brand myself and produce work that fitted nicely into a box frustrating and some how an antithesis to what I considered being an artist involved.

I got tired of the obvious tricks being used in a lot of contemporary art, visual puns that are words based or the blunt conjoining of two things e.g. diamonds and a skull /wealth + death.
"composed of fast art: nothing to detain you for long"  
 Laura Cumming, Observer Oct 4th

It is about time for something new, something more considered more subtle with an positivity other than wealth seeking. I know the art world is all about money, but for artists like myself who actively decided to stop making artwork that was commercially successful to seek something else (and not the only one), it is about time there was some sort of transition from, or re-equaluation of this, or at least more writing from this point of view. I felt that Cumming's review did acknowledge this. Recently I went to an artists/designers talk, one of the speakers said, no artist now makes art 'after working in the paddy field all day', but in reality the majority of artists I know all have jobs to support their art work. We talk about 'professional artists' where we expect the word professional to mean that they make money from it, we should obviously not consider earning money from their art as validity of their role as an artist in society.

I want to go back to the quote  "composed of fast art: nothing to detain you for long".  We need to consider how the internet is affecting us, changing us. Personally I love the internet and have to fight off my surfing addiction. As good as it is, our attention spans are changing, we all have ADHD, flicking from one window to the next. I doubt anyone has read to this part of this post (I doubt I would have). Things around us are not faster, our duration of focus has changed. Things are not considered, conversations are text messages. Please don't think of me as an old fuddy duddy conservative seeking stop change at all costs, but think of me as someone who wants you to see slow life - consideration - empty space, as something new that we can earth to allow us to look at the world with fresh eyes.