POST #168: ON BECOMING INVISIBLE

While shopping at Trader Joe’s today, I passed an interesting looking man, late 50s, 60 maybe. I glanced at him but received a blank stare in return. It took a moment for me to realize that he hadn’t noticed me at all – I was an invisible old(er) woman.

I think it has more to do with age than gender since I’ve heard similar complaints from older men; they too become invisible with age. But it is worse for women, especially good-looking ones who have become accustomed to being admired, flirted with, able to manipulate both men and women with their looks. They have a tough time adjusting to being invisible, but hey, that’s the price we pay for growing old. What was the line in some ‘50s novel I once read? “Die young and have a good looking corpse.”

There’s something to be said for being invisible. You don’t have to put on makeup when you go to the supermarket, or a bra when you go walking at the gym. You don’t have to have some guy leering at you wondering if you’re wearing underpants.  Nobody sees you; invisibility is a protective cloak. It allows you to be the observer, not the observed.

I don’t mind becoming sexually invisible as I age but I do resent being treated as intellectually disabled, as is often the case. There’s a perverse side of me that takes great pleasure in the look on the faces of the younger generation when they discover I know more about the subject under discussion than they do. Yes. I do know who Sartre is and I can also quote Baudelaire (badly).  In other periods of history, older meant wiser, someone to be looked up to, listened to. Obviously, that no longer the case.

I was chatting with some friends recently about this subject and we were reminded of a wonderful c1970 movie starring Ruth Gordon: “Harold & Maude.” Maude is a full of life seductress approaching her 80^th birthday - with a lot to teach her adolescent lover. In the words of the immortal baseball coach, Leo Durocher: “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

POST #167: Art in a Time of Terror

As the Trumpian night descends upon us, it will be interesting to see how the art world responds, if it responds at all. So far, our esteemed President has accurately appraised the insignificance of the arts in his Pantheon of Power. They aren’t even important enough for him to attack. At one time, artists were formidable critics of power, a respected elite to be reckoned with. Now they are lap dogs, in thrall to rich patrons  (investors, really, not even collectors) backed up by a museum structure struggling to come up with a new flavor of the month, preferably a previously undiscovered minority that needs to be brought under the tent. At least, in the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy thought artists, writers and filmmakers important enough to frighten into silence.

Every morning, I open my New York Times Art Section in the vain hope that there will be something new that’s worth a damn but I find only meaningless abstraction or cliché “rights” movements or assemblages of detritus (lots of assembled detritus) Humanism? Satire? All passe, died in the 1950s, killed off by the esteemed Senator  under the tutelage of his mentor (and Donald Trump’s), Roy Cohn. If there is some “protest” art around, it is so cliché-ridden as to be worthless. Satire? Forget it. It can be dangerous to your financial health. The so-called elite didn’t get rich by encouraging people to make fun of them. It costs so much today to even be an impoverished artist that no one in their right mind is going to be stupid enough to make fun of the hand that’s paying the bills. Certainly not the artists who are around today; they are all gratefully circling the money trough.

And, oddly enough, none of this retreat from life is deliberate. The social realists of the ‘40s such as Philip Guston and Mark Rothko who turned to abstraction in the 50s during the Age of McCarthy didn’t consciously say to themselves: “I’m scared so I’ll only paint colored brush strokes.” It’s not like Nazi Germany where the terror, the repression was overt. Times change; fashions in art change. Be safe and avoid depicting the real world; no one can blame you for what you didn’t say.

So where am I going with this screed? I’m trying to explain (to myself mostly) why I’m now painting imaginary cities occupied by mysterious fragmented men and beasts instead of my usual gangsters and plutocrats. None of this is conscious or deliberate since I paint without premeditation. It’s like reality has now passed the point where satire is even a possibility. How do you satirize a Donald Trump with his orange hair and dangling penis tie? Barbie Doll wives? the goons that surround him? It’s forcing me into a make-believe universe that I’ll probably hang around in  until the next election;  it’s more tolerable than reality any day.

Respectfully (and sadly) submitted,

Renee Kahn