In the interim for the resurrection of the systems, ideologies and morais of the American identity there is a call for the reimagining of the American Artist. There is a job description that has never been written without compromising the title of “Artist” to human resource scrutiny. There is a void in society that is echoed in every state, city, and community. Some artists have strayed under the risk of poverty and others have developed careers out of their fine art degrees for the greater consumer good of the American dream.

There are bands of Artists whose calling have gone unredeemed by the lack of opportunity to contribute to culture without a marketable appeal. Artist in small towns as in big cities have been lead to interrogate the nature of their visions and contributions in the absence of a corporate title or a barista’s apron.  

Today from the echoes of burst bubbles there is a call of arms to the American Artist. There is corner office vacant for the cultural engineers to build bridges from the media hype to the reality of communities depraved of meaning. There are men in ties sobering from their high who’s killer instincts need to be tamed to build a new foundation in the forth dimension. The Artist is a preordained leader with the qualifications of vision and the skill set to execute the collective dream that is being drafted from the round tables of occupied cities. There is no deadline, submissions are always accepted, but the need is abundant, we are looking for Artist to lead the way to rebuild this fatherless county. 

The flâneur sits on the fence looking out into the shifting landscape. In one simple gesture he can jump to his feet and join society or he could swivel his head back slightly and plunge into oblivion. Both romantic ideas are equal part ingredients in his genetic make-up. His return is the result of the polar dynamics that supports America’s armature. He is armed with a quasi-education, adorned with marketing demographic labels and a 360 degree squared perspective of self. The Flâneur first emerged in 18th century France, post Revolution. Having inherit the luxury of individualism he strolled the boulevards with the air of a dandy asking, “Is that all there is?”

The flâneur in question today poses the same question pre-revolution and questions its need. He knows part of the answer to why society’s sky is falling, but has not platform or soapbox. His contribution is too rhetorical for facebook yet unfit for the printed page. He, along with other men and women of late has lived through patriotic traumas that have no place in society to heal. There are no rituals to transcend in the crowded realms of corporate venues. It is the burden of spirit that struggles in the flaneur, because he is a self-loathing optimist.  He questions existence not as existential calisthenics but because he knows there is an answer. He has recognized the promise of an answer in the aesthetic of art encrypted in fashion magazines, 30-second ads and vacation packages to what remains of nature.

The flâneure is the figure that congeals after innocence is lost, after the desecration of everything through apocalyptic plots of a scripted realities and the verisimilitude of freedom.  For the virtuous flaneur, this illusion is paralyzing. To taste, to touch, and to live would mean accepting the loss of sincerity and self. It would mean a dissention from his fence, which has served as makeshift pedestal. We have been granted illusions of liberty to occupy our poverty, leaving the flâneur to battle the revolution in himself, to keep him from leaping forward and charging reality for freedom.

Title: Chart 1 (for forgotten ritual and appropriated symbols)

Size: 8.5 x 11 feet

Medium: Digital photography & Photoshop  

Price: upon request. 

This Chart is an exercise in computer-aided drawing. I collaged and assembled the chart with photographs I have taken and sourced. Using my own visual dialect I have created a personal monument to collective memories of forgotten ritual and appropriated symbols.

We come in over the horizons of LA, New York and onto every metro-city of the world. Young and old mostly young, each of us pre-programmed and wired to function on the same ego-glitches en masse. It was Joe, Joe Buck the Midnight Cowboy who rode the silver greyhound bus into town, knowing damn well he wasn’t a real cowboy but a real stud. Big eyed and clutching to a hand-held radio as if it were a two-way radio, complete with incoming orders. All Joe Buck had was his boner for life, his personal navigational system to manhood. It was New York, 1969, the same wasteland and gold mine that emerges in 2011 after the fall of Wall Street giants in three-piece suits and the 99 percent get ready to riot. There is always room for another hustler on these streets, Joe Buck, tall, blond and handsome - how could he miss?

 Boys and certain men, like myself, in a delayed adolescence, find examples of manhood from wherever and from anyone who ever lived or appeared on screen. While I was searching for a cheap thrill after dinner one night, the first X –rated movie to win an Oscar for best picture, seemed like desert. As I watched Midnight Cowboy for the first time, it seemed personally familiar and full of messages I had somehow missed on my own greyhound bus ride to New York City.  The film set forth a kind of moral code for city bound hustlers turned honorable men.  

In the film, Joe’s solitary existence was accompanied by shadowy dark flashbacks, dirty sex made the grime of the city tolerable and eased his pain if only for the moment. Through it all, Joe unshakably held his cowboy swagger. The hustler is a trick, a cheat, a thief and above all a survivor.  Joe Buck arrives at manhood in his flaccid attempts to flip tricks and conquer sexual clichés alongside his quasi-pimp Rico: Rico Rizzo from the Bronx. Both men shared the same pathos that led them to converge and orbit as mutual partners. Their union becomes a cause and purpose for Joe to walk the walk and usher Rico to his pending end. Eventually Joe becomes the unlikely hero who wears his integrity like a badge and harbors the only person more fragile than he. Like the cowboy he was meant to be, he rode greyhound off into the horizon with Rico at his side.

Do these times of transition and grime allow the hustler a slim window for redemption? Joe reminds us that we are all still on that bus, in a shit hole apartment, wearing our own cowboy costume but poised with fragile integrity. It reminded me that a man’s swagger isn’t always choreographed by ego or delusions of grandeur but by purpose and a divine right granted by the loners who before them left the light so we can follow. This city will always birth survivors under different labels and names- interns, free lancers or artists. I am neither cowboy nor stud; I am a man coasting on the horizon with my own swagger and an unshakable boner for life.