Art news
How much of the news I let into my life comes from art? Almost all of it. And the news that doesn't come from art, the news that comes from The New York Times for instance, which I'm grateful for and read most every day, is tested against what I know and what I love about art--that art is an act of unknowing as much as a form of knowing, and tries to give equal voice to each.
At the top of the stairs in my home is a Carlos Mollura artpiece--a rectangular piece of red and white vinyl, artfully made and then inflated and placed in a frame. I've had it for almost 20 years. I get some meaning from it every time I see it. A large part of the meaning is that I don't know what it means. I mean, is it a sculpture or is it a painting? Everytime I want to call it a painting--it hangs on the wall like a painting, it has a frame--I think I might be mistaken, that instead, it's a sculpture and Mollura chose to put in a frame to make me think about the differences and similarities between painting and sculpture, and maybe even the history of each form of art.
It's a piece I can actually take the air out of, by pulling the plug out and deflating the vinyl, which I've done several times when moving the piece from place to place. Deflating the Carlos Mollura artpiece changes the piece completely, gives it an entirely new meaning. Imagine taking the air out of a Rothko? It can't be imagined, can it?
So what kind of news am I gathering when I walk past the Carlos Mollura piece at the top of the stairs, knowing it's art I can both take the air out of and put the air back in. I'm not entirely sure, but I know it's about something that's both happened and hasn't happened; and that as long as it's in my house at the top of the stairs where I pass by every morning waking up and pass by every night before I go to bed, I'll read it as the ever-present dialog between the present and past, which is exactly the way I'm reading the news these days, having learned better how to read the news by my looking at art.
What if all our news came from art, what then?