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Dearest Godson Felix
Artist vs Entertainer
What’s the Difference?
June 1st, 2022
Dearest Godson Felix,
The other day you asked, ‘What are The Meta Munchkins all about?’ This got me thinking. A few weeks ago, some friends and I visited an art show by a highly influential and beloved professor who taught my all-important art studio classes at uni. My friends arrived earlier than I, and in my absence, checked out the show. I found them outside the gallery where they greeted me with optimism, hoping that I might help them understand the art. We proceeded into the gallery and were warmly greeted by my beloved professor Yvonne Lammerich, who introduced her work, a beautiful array of mirrors woven into a spinning pillar. Yvonne explained the work’s deep meaning which encompassed art history’s perennial ‘point of view’ and its perpetual pursuit of replicating perspective space and the experience of seeing.
It dawned on me that without Yvonne’s explanation, the work was very difficult to understand, as was evident by my confused friends. I was also reminded of something the wise Chilly Gonzales once said: ‘The artist is someone who just pleases himself, or herself – or maybe someone who thinks that being an artist is a great lifestyle choice, but doesn’t have the sack to pull it off. A great entertainer – he or she is always an artist. But an artist is only rarely an entertainer.’ So I asked my beloved professor, “Aren’t you just masturbating – this work is so hard to decipher, are you not just making art for yourself?” She quickly retorted, “But an orgasm fades into nothingness,” to which I replied, “Not if you catch it in a tissue, mold it into something, wait for it to dry and voilà, you have a sculpture.”
When we departed the exhibition, I asked my friends what they thought about their gallery adventure, and they confided that having the artist explain the work not only helped make sense of its deep meaning but also provided an intimate experience that added an additional layer of interpersonal connection – aura.
It dawned on me that without Yvonne’s explanation, the work was very difficult to understand, as was evident by my confused friends. I was also reminded of something the wise Chilly Gonzales once said: ‘The artist is someone who just pleases himself, or herself – or maybe someone who thinks that being an artist is a great lifestyle choice, but doesn’t have the sack to pull it off. A great entertainer – he or she is always an artist. But an artist is only rarely an entertainer.’ So I asked my beloved professor, “Aren’t you just masturbating – this work is so hard to decipher, are you not just making art for yourself?” She quickly retorted, “But an orgasm fades into nothingness,” to which I replied, “Not if you catch it in a tissue, mold it into something, wait for it to dry and voilà, you have a sculpture.”
When we departed the exhibition, I asked my friends what they thought about their gallery adventure, and they confided that having the artist explain the work not only helped make sense of its deep meaning but also provided an intimate experience that added an additional layer of interpersonal connection – aura.
So, what are The Meta Munchkins all about? Every year in the dead of Canada’s dark-dark-so-dark-winter, once the darkness has burned a hole in my head, I go fetch some heavy-gauge, super-fine Italian paper and set to work rubbing out painting after painting, a whole collection. The Meta Munchkins are made in three simple steps: background, mid-ground, and foreground. I start by selecting my color palette. Because of the darkness, I tend to gravitate to vibrant poppy colors, best described as pure optimism or a beach vacation. When applying paint, I beat my bottles, forcing out splotchy shots of pigment all over my heavy-gauge, super-fine Italian paper. Next, I mop up the excess paint with tissues. The resulting backgrounds are Kandinsky Duchamps, atmospheric abstractions like universes to be inhabited by the mid-ground subconscious doodles. I produce these doodles by closing my eyes and, in a meditative manner, breathing not deeply but calmly, keeping my mind here and clear, forcing my stream of consciousness to decouple, while gliding my pen over the heavy-gauge, super-fine Italian paper to produce the resulting subconscious doodle. The foreground is the last step and truly brings the work to life. Retracing my strokes, I populate my doodles with a community of Meta Munchkins, their funny little eyes oscillating along my subconscious noodle, I mean doodle. So you see, The Meta Munchkins are nothing more than pure masturbation and I love rubbing them out.
And so Dearest Godson Felix, the difference between an artist and an entertainer is the complexity of the signified they bake into their signifiers. Where artists pleasure themselves with idiosyncratic puzzles that few can decipher, entertainers remix memes into easily understood content for everyone.