“THE GREAT WORK” (Put a Frame Around It!) by Richard F. Yates

[Photograph of the new collage I made for the back of my most recent notebook. The scraps came from the destroyed “Attendance Cards” created for the first gathering of The Novelty and Conversation Club---with a little bit of inky smarm added to increase the monstrosity effect. 2019.]

The idea that the finished product---the mural, the novel, the film, the opera---that these B.I.G. end products are the IMPORTANT aspect (the ONLY important part) of ART is sad…unfortunate…as this belief misses the entire point of what art IS (for creators AND for the “audience.”)

I don’t care about what museums or critics or gallery owners or documentaries or text books or PEOPLE say---the end PRODUCT of artistic expression is far less important than the urge, the inspiration, the act of creating, the interactions between the artist and other folks before-during-and-after the work is complete, the way the art is introduced to “society,” the conversation AROUND and ABOUT the work, and the influence that each of these elements of the process has on society, the artist, and future works of art… This rhizomatic, interconnected WEB of people and art and media and commerce---the MOVEMENT, the TIDAL push/pull of it all…

It’s all one big, messy, sometimes invisible, COSMI-COMEDIC THROB…

An ATOMIC PINBALL MACHINE with infinite lights and sounds and bumpers and flippers---and EVERYONE plays ALL AT ONCE, whether they know it or not.

Visual art, plastic arts, writing, poetry, music, photography, film, drama, performance, crafts, fashion, criticism, participation, appreciation, and willful or naïve ignorance---ALL PART OF THE GREAT WORK… L.I.V.I.N.(apostrophe).

Now just TRY to put a frame (and a price tag) on THAT!

---Richard F. Yates (Holy Fool)

[Inspired by reading in Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work!, Robert Browning’s “Why I Am a Liberal,” Simon Reynold’s Rip It Up and Start Again, and listening to a cubic ton of music…]

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