I think that song is from the Simpsons or some other delicious low grade popular social commentary text, and I believe it was a jingle in the cartoon for a chocolate bar... "oozy gooey chewy on the inside... crunchy munchy chocolate on the outside... you put the inside on the outside, is it good?" or something of a similar ilk.
Being part of the world means putting your inside on the outside.
Art has also for a long time been about putting the inside on the outside and then wondering whether it's good. To avoid having to wonder whether what they're doing is good nowadays plenty of people just put the outside on the outside; they find something about the world and show it in a new light by making it ambiguous or concrete. Instead of being inventors they've turned to salespeople. Instead of having to wonder whether their insides are good or bad they can look at ideas and attitudes and occurrences in the world and say "this is bad, I'll show you how bad it is". Often in contemporary art people don't say "this is good, I'll show you how good it is", because faith isn't as eye catching as heresy. So I'm starting to see contemporary art as a locus where artists are less like people and more like agencies of consciousness - conduits of a collective vision. Instead of art being about art or artists, art is about us.
I feel that people not engaged with that contemporary commercial cult of art may often see artists as people with long feelings that unravel like some abstract line drawled across canvasses large enough to engulf a persons entire line of sight - lines potent with emotion, drawn out of them directly from the heart, down the left arm and through a paintbrush. Certainly those people do exist, and anyone can be that person. But the problem with putting the inside on the outside like that is that the need then arises to wonder whether it's good.
I guess I'm returning to a question I've already asked with an answer I've already found... Good and bad should be eliminated from vocabulary. Good and bad are too ethereal and have no human voice behind them. Wise and unwise are more relatable. I can imagine what a wise person does far more easily than imagine what a good person does.
I'm going to see art as wise and unwise.
Being part of the world means putting your inside on the outside.
Art has also for a long time been about putting the inside on the outside and then wondering whether it's good. To avoid having to wonder whether what they're doing is good nowadays plenty of people just put the outside on the outside; they find something about the world and show it in a new light by making it ambiguous or concrete. Instead of being inventors they've turned to salespeople. Instead of having to wonder whether their insides are good or bad they can look at ideas and attitudes and occurrences in the world and say "this is bad, I'll show you how bad it is". Often in contemporary art people don't say "this is good, I'll show you how good it is", because faith isn't as eye catching as heresy. So I'm starting to see contemporary art as a locus where artists are less like people and more like agencies of consciousness - conduits of a collective vision. Instead of art being about art or artists, art is about us.
I feel that people not engaged with that contemporary commercial cult of art may often see artists as people with long feelings that unravel like some abstract line drawled across canvasses large enough to engulf a persons entire line of sight - lines potent with emotion, drawn out of them directly from the heart, down the left arm and through a paintbrush. Certainly those people do exist, and anyone can be that person. But the problem with putting the inside on the outside like that is that the need then arises to wonder whether it's good.
I guess I'm returning to a question I've already asked with an answer I've already found... Good and bad should be eliminated from vocabulary. Good and bad are too ethereal and have no human voice behind them. Wise and unwise are more relatable. I can imagine what a wise person does far more easily than imagine what a good person does.
I'm going to see art as wise and unwise.
 Put the inside on the outside - is it good? |
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