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Mickey Z
Cool Observer
the Department of Homeland Security.
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Give the artists some room
Sitting in Brooklyn Bagel (in Astoria), enjoying a whole wheat everything bagel with tofu vegetable cream cheese with Michele this morning, the chilly rain outside combined with the heat inside to cloud the huge glass window. A little girl, maybe 5, happily capitalized on this opportunity to draw with her finger on the foggy window.
A blue collar-looking guy at a nearby table slid his chair back away from the little girl. When I smiled at this guy, he shrugged: “Gotta give the artist some room.”
If only…
When reporting on the infamous New York School of abstract expressionist painters in 1947, art critic Clement Greenberg pondered, “What can fifty do against one hundred and forty million?” It wasn’t so much an entire population stacked against a band of radical painters that Greenberg was contemplating...rather it was 140 million Americans essentially ignoring a movement that would eventually change the face of art.
The U.S. population has doubled in the fifty-plus years since Jackson Pollack dripped his way onto the cover of Life magazine...and there are still plenty of movements being ignored by the majority. In fact, I get the feeling there’s a new wave of writers, thinkers, and rabble-rousers out there...operating under the radar to eventually change the face of activism.
What can 50 do against 300 million? I’d like to find out.
(P.S. Since today is Dec. 7, here’s a link to an old Pearl Harbor-related piece of mine. Gotta stay timely: http://www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2001-05/28mickey.htm)
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