THE CURRENT STATE OF ART STUDENTS

 After many years of teaching and many years of painting I have grown tired but no less passionate. A long time ago, to borrow a formulation from Robert Lowell, I asked to be obsessed by the arts, and I was blessed with the capacity to do so. The necessity of having to earn an honest living had me, at first, driving a taxi and then ultimately teaching. In both capacities I was forced to waste my time persuading my clients. In the first instance, I had to reassure my passengers that I was not a bandit who was exploiting their geographic ignorance by sending them on a costly circuitous route. In the second instance, like Moses, I had to convince my flock to accept abstraction as an article of faith.

I'm often asked if I've seen any change in my students in recent years. People want to know if the new technologies and the accompanying distractions has impacted their ability to concentrate. I've given this a lot of thought and I shared my thoughts recently with the Los Angeles podcaster Timmy Black.

An excerpt of our conversation appears in the video below.  

Boris Lemon Autoportraits

What does is say when an artist has no other subject matter but himself?

I asked myself this question and the answer left me bereft.

ON LEADERSHIP

Boris Lemon (date unknown)

The other day I heard the term "thought leader." I wasn't sure what it meant. I couldn't figure out if it was a good thing or a bad thing.

Are intellectuals thought leaders? Or are autocrats thought leaders?

And if there are so many "thought leaders" these days, who's leading the leaders and are there enough leaderless leftovers available to be led?

 

WHERE THERE IS HOPELESSNESS THERE IS HOPE

I am ashamed to admit that due to some ill-advised investments and a series of disastrous marriages I had been reduced to the financial condition of a cave-dweller.

My skills as an artist, trained in the finest academies in the former Soviet Union had prepared me for nothing more than hack illustration work and teaching part-time in a private middle school for Mennonite girls.

Ever the pessimist, I never anticipated the redemptive call from Silicon Valley. How BlissIntuit.com got my name, I'll never know but my fortunes have dramatically changed now that I am the "official voice" of their popular guided meditation series, Think Again.

So please spread the word! Maybe I could narrate a few audiobooks as well!

The Lives of Contemporary Artists

As an art educator, as someone dedicated to the the intellectual well-being of young aspiring artists, I always expect my students to keep fastidiously up to date with Timmy Black's important podcast.

AN EARLY GIFT FROM A REMARKABLE MAN

I am amazed and I am grateful to this great country, The United States of America!

To be featured on Timmy Black's podcast, The Lives of Contemporary Artists is literally a dream come true.

I hope you can take some time to listen (it's only about 6 minutes long) and I hope as well that you can share this with your friends.

If good things happen as a result of all this publicity, I may be able, at last, to retire from teaching.

(I promise I will not run for political office)

бред сивой кобылы

At one time, teaching drawing and painting to art students was a difficult job.

Now it's as easy as delivering a baby.

Like driverless cars, smart sweaters and mold, agency and intention are strictly optional.

When I was at the Academy in the former Soviet Union, if we dared to draw anything but the strictest rendering of the perfect worker's body we risked expulsion.

And that's if we were lucky.

Here in the great and soon to be greater United States of America, there is so much freedom, an art professor can make all manner of claims and assertions and nobody will care.

When I started making instructional videos for my students my motive was fairly straightforward. While they watched I was able to read the paper and check my email.

I noticed that my students were doing the same (except for the reading the paper part). 

It then occurred to me that I could sneak into my demonstrations a few deliberate mistakes and no one would be the wiser. I did this under the pretense that as a newly minted American artist I could pretend that I was producing a piece of post-modern, conceptual, neo-Dada, performance art.




... and wouldn't you know it .... I was just invited to participate in a very high-profile exhibition called Genderless Zen Entropy which will open in the spring at Humlout & Girth!

 I love this country!!!!!!!