The culturally pretentious are sometimes much less to be trusted than the politically ambitious. At the minimum, the politicians know what they’re after and where they are when they get there. The dabblers in culture are too often content to be in the opposite position: uninformed by true education and, therefore, incapable of trusting their own judgments on matters of taste, they rely instead on the winds of fad. In some parts of Texas lately those winds have been blowing in a curious direction.
A few months ago, Atlantic Monthly devoted an entire issue to Texas – its myths, fantasies, wonders and incongruities. Unfortunately, the issue leaned more heavily toward myth than anything else, with the result that it seemed to be written about another place in another age. Among the general clutter of notions ranging from the original to the stupendously naive, my attention was drawn to a little article pretending to be “A Brief Tour of the Arts.” The tour, as it turned out, was so brief as to be almost instantaneous. The author, a fellow Texan, adopted the easy pose that might be called reverse-provincialism. This cultural mind-set (Texas is a wasteland, sorta. Its citizens are boors, sorta. Its artists are rank amateurs, sorta) is one of those Austin fads that is now and then picked up and rattled like a child’s toy by people who (1) don’t know any better, (2) aren’t quite capable of comprehending that Texas is no longer the Texas they have patronizingly chided for so long, and (3) are absolutely scared to death of being snickered at by anyone they regard as sophisticated.
You can see that this mind-set puts a terrible burden on a person to overcompensate, like the high-wire walker who, for fear of falling forward, leans to the rear and collapses backward. It’s interesting that it results in precisely the same provincialism at which it professes to sneer. An author who writes about Texas artists that”most alternate between syrupy fields of bluebonnets and inane abstract expressionism” shows about the same depth of perception as the East Texas legislator who argued forcefully and seriously against liquor by the drink because it would destroy a great state institution, the brown bag. It’s provincialism, all right – one happens to be maudlin while the other is merely mundane. An author so firmly committed to keeping his eyes shut would do well to heed the same injunction with his mouth.
Paradoxes may not be easily understood, but they shouldn’t be so capriciously dismissed. The paradoxes surrounding and stimulating the current excitement in the arts in Texas are complex enough, we hope, to produce plenty of solid critical appraisals and evaluations. We are beginning to see the emergence of brilliant and original works by artists whose imaginations are imbued with a lively sense of place. Ironically, it may be the Texan’s natural extravagance which is stirring our artists toward the creative exploration of the place which gives them their sense of being. If so, all the better.
If we are to be provincial about it, I prefer the lusty and self-assured provincialism of Dave Hickey, whose “The Texas to New York via Nashville Semi-Transcontinental Epiphany Tactic” appeared in a recent issue of Art in America. Hickey writes, “Home, in the twentieth century, is less where your heart is, than where you understand the sons-of-bitches. Especially in Texas, where it is the vitality of the sons-of-bitches which makes everything possible, where there is more voracious mercantile energy, more vanity and more pretentiousness than any place I’ve been – excepting Manhattan. Of such stuff are cultural communities made … it is that sense of possibility, which has been able to sustain itself, that I most value.”
Taking Hickey’s cue, we’ve joined with the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts in presenting a unique series, beginning this month. Entitled “Visions of the City,” the series results from invitations to a few Dallas artists to create for us original works of art for display in our pages. Each artist has been asked to give us his own interpretation of the city, or some aspect of it, through the medium of his choice. The series, which is being underwritten by Dallas companies (no doubt founded by voracious mercantile energy), will run for the next twelve months.
Our purposes for joining with the Museum on this project are simple: we hope to give Dallas artists some deserved recognition, and we want our readers to learn to appreciate the blossoming talent that makes the arts in Dallas alive and flourishing. A little encouragement, we hope, will go a long way.
More encouragement may come this month from the Texas Legislature, which is considering a substantial increase in the appropriation to the Texas Com-mission on the Arts and Humanities. I won’t regale you with the embarrassing statistics of our state’s lack of financial support for the arts. It is the state’s function to lend its efforts to those activities, such as the promotion of tourism, conventions and the arts, which are of general benefit to all its citizens. The state’s record on this score is silly. I strongly urge you to jot a note to the Dallas Delegation, c/o Representative Chris Semos, Capitol Station, Austin, to encourage a positive vote on this measure. No investment could produce greater dividends.
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