No. 06 Poetry Tuesday | the WHY CHEAP ART? manifesto

 

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the WHY CHEAP ART? manifesto
by Bread and Puppet

People have been thinking too long that
ART is a PRIVILEGE of the museums & the
RICH. ART IS NOT A BUSINESS!
It does not belong to banks & fancy investors
ART IS FOOD. You can’t EAT it BUT it FEEDS
you. ART has to be CHEAP & available to
EVERYBODY. It needs to be EVERYWHERE
because it is the INSIDE of the
WORLD.
ART SOOTHES PAIN!
Art wakes up sleepers!
ART FIGHTS AGAINST WAR AND STUPIDITY!
Art SINGS HALLELUJA!
ART IS LIKE GOOD BREAD!
Art is like green trees!
Art is like white clouds in blue sky!
ART IS CHEAP!
HURRAH!

Bread & Puppet | Glover, Vermont, 1984

 

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Why Gregory loves the Why Cheap Art? manifesto :

“I like the words as text as font as heiroglyph. As art. How it makes it seem like grafitti on a museum wall. A fuck you to a docent. Beyond the perfect passionate tone, indignance for costly frames, it moreover supports an egalitarianism to art and OF art. It legitimizes the amateur. And creates a museum anywhere you stop to look. Something nice to that.”

 

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POETRY POST NO.06 CAME FROM GREGORY BONSIGNORE, WRITER AND GENERAL LIFE rabble-rouser, on the back of a postcard of the Library of Alexandrina. Yes, the library of Alexandrina in Egypt, where Gregory managed to get himself ensconced as playwright in residence for six months a few years back. We should probably ask him to do a guest-blog about what being the playwright in residence at the library of Alexandrina entails but in the meantime, to the poem/ manifesto.

It seems it was written by self-confessed hippies back in the eighties protesting, as you may imagine, the corporatization of Art. Now, when i first received it, i thought it was really fun and i loved that this was gregory’s favorite poem of choice, but in terms of it truly stirring something in me, i was left a little at a loss. I just wasn’t sure that i completely agreed with it. What happens to the artists’ self-worth and their psyches if we tell them to create cheap art? As a society, don’t we tend not to value things that are cheap or free? How is that going to help Art soothe pain and fight against war and stupidity?

Then a funny thing happened. I have a quote on my wall by Harry Houdini, that tells us rather poetically “I am a great admirer of mystery and magic. Look at this life — all mystery and magic.” And suddenly, like eisenstein’s theory of movie montage, where seeing two different images next to each other magically create a third idea in your mind, i suddenly got what gregory had understood all along. The manifesto wasn’t only ranting against the richies and the investment bankers for buying up our art and hanging it in their offices where we can’t see it. No, it’s also, and perhaps more importantly, alerting us to the fact that when we choose to view art in this context, as something to be stared at on a wall of a designated place where we go to experience “art”, it becomes a rarified experience, and we lose the innate understanding that art and its ability to nourish our soul is in fact absolutely EVERYWHERE.

Houdini and the folks at bread and puppet theater are nudging us rather loudly, in CAPs no less, to remember (for we certainly knew it when we were bambinos) that magic and wonder are all around us. As Gregory puts it so eloquently, “A museum anywhere you stop to look.” I love that term. Hippie-wotsit as it may sound, this increasingly seems to be the answer to what many of us yearn for in this life. Not the money or the success that we think we’re looking for (but never seems to quench the hole if and when we get it,) rather the ability to be fascinated and astonished and artistically nourished by what we see around us at any given moment. Which ultimately, if we can stop for long enough to really get there, is a very exciting concept.

But so long as we see art as something that hangs in a museum, we forget that it also exists on the sidewalk, in the bushes and on the floor of the car park where we parked our car this morning. We walk past a beautiful leaf in the shape of a heart that would have a hundred children gasping with wonder at their artistic discovery and we say “sorry leaf, i don’t even have a moment to notice you. I have an art exhibit to get to.”

Which brings us nicely to our sister in arms: HEARTS: We see love everywhere a lovely example, if we say so ourselves, of what can be created when individuals open their eyes to the idea that art can pop up everywhere they stop to look. So, in the name of Houdini and the bread and puppet theater, and gregory bonsignore, you are cordially invited to come join the gang heart see-ers. As newbies have confessed, you’ll start seeing the world through new eyes and suddenly even a trip to the grocery store or a walk behind your house will become a magical adventure. And that is most certainly worthy of a hooray hurrah!

with love and wonder and lots of it,
nicola

PS: Lastly, and most importantly, how much do we love that gregory wrote it in purple cartridge pen ink? I’m pretty certain you could write your shopping list in purple cartridge pen ink and it would read like poetry.

 

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