Social Security: A Bipartisan “Voluntary Giving” Safety Net

Social Security:

A Bipartisan “Voluntary Giving” Safety Net

Our social security fund will start paying out more than it receives by 2018 and by 2041 (when I’ll have my 87 year old snout at the trough) it will be unable to meet its obligations. Since we designated this sinking ship the USS Sacred Cow, logical overhauls are politically impractical. Personally, I would make social security more “needs-based” and less contribution/entitlement-based, so wealthy retirees receive less and little old ladies can upgrade from cat food to tuna. Obviously, the “I paid into the system and expect every penny back” crowd would never allow this to happen, but what if these folks were afforded the privilege of altruism? It may not save the system, but it will lessen the pain of its decline.

Recently, I had chance to make a charitable contribution through a site called Donorschoose.org. Public school teachers in underprivileged areas post their specific needs, e.g., we funded a “white board” and markers for around $60. All of the funds were used as proposed, the teacher and the students thanked us, and they keep us informed of their progress. It really is better to give than receive!

I propose that the Social Security Administration create a “Donorschoose” website where the less fortunate (those with inadequate SSI) can post their picture, story, circumstances, etc. SSI recipients who want to experience the joy of giving can log onto the site, identify one or more “worthies,” and have an amount of their choice deducted from their next scheduled distribution. An “autopay” feature could help regularly support the recipient(s). Politically, this should appease both AARP and conservatives who believe that 1) people shouldn’t get more than they deserve, and 2) charity should be a private, not government function. Liberals might prefer a more comprehensive government response, but that will never happen (except in crisis). I see a chance for the bi-partisanism sorely missed over the past few years.

This proposal won’t fix social security, but it will help those in need and, perhaps in the long run, create a culture of giving where enough donors will forgo their entitlements altogether. In the meantime, young people should start viewing their payments as a tax and not an entitlement, and Congress should codify this new paradigm so future generations don’t face the same problem.

Riverside Art Museums

The Riverside Art Museum

My “ex” was an art history major at Emory; my interest was primarily in architecture. During our many museum visits, her focus was on fine art, mine was on design and construction. While I’m still passionate about architecture, my current interest is art. That brings us to our docent. Years ago I would have relished his guessing game at the old YWCA: “what do you suppose this room was used for?” Yes, those fine hardwood floors were dribbled on by basketballs, not paint. And bad acoustics screams “indoor pool.”

Nevertheless, I enjoyed hearing about the building’s architect, Julia Morgan. Imagine, a woman designing our machismo Americanus, Hearst Castle. I don’t know what she learned at The Beaux-Arts Institute, but she must have been very in touch with her inner male.

Milford Zornes choreographs watercolors in ways I didn’t know possible. Best in show: Grand Canyon, 2005. Could he capture California light or what?

Gallery #2. I enjoyed most of the six artists, but I fell into the trap of thinking too much like an art historian… long on left brain, short on “guts.” Janet Rosener’s smooth surfaces and soft edges were reminiscent of Helen Frankenthaler (that’s a good thing, I love her work). Leestermaker’s bold colors with central black themes are worthy of my living room while Thibeaut’s abstracted “cityscape” amazed me; the impression of the Superdome appeared as a roofed city, perhaps Roman. But his Leroy Neiman style turned me off. Here is a quote from the movie Airplane, the scene where the bad guys are frustrated by the protagonist’s ability to resist traditional torture:

        Do you want me to bring out the LeRoy Neiman paintings?

        No. We cannot risk violating the Geneva Convention.

Finally, Werfel’s “all over” paintings were too busy for my taste; they go too far all over the place.

Sweeny Art Gallery

Pedro Alvarez undoubtedly digs deeply into the Cuban soul, but his political/social satire loses some of it poignancy on Americans. Of greater interest to me was Andrew Jackson (catalyzer of American Indian diaspora) juxtaposed against the noble dispossessed “savage” in the Romantic Dollarscape Series. The Disney series suggests a Dalian dream (surreal juxtaposition of melting “cheese” and cheesy American entertainment), within an uncanny de Chirico tableau (13.6), plus Eros (see the uncircumcised phallic candles on the right of Cecilia Valdes in Wonderland).

Incognegro: New Work by Mark Steven Greenfield. Enough already, we get it! But inventive, nevertheless, for an old symbolic warhorse of racial cliché. Yes, we are all racists, but most of us are working on it. And that’s good.

UCR/CMP Digital Studio Gallery

More people have had cameras inside of them (read “colonoscopy” or “arthroscopic surgery”) than have been inside a camera. Now I can proudly say I’ve been both inside a camera obscura and have had an obscure camera inside of me.

"Artality"

“Artality”

I scanned the front page of today’s New York Times and spotted an “Abstract Expressionist” work. However, I didn’t notice a clue to its provenance; my thumb covered the lower left (see black rectangle). Studying art history heightens awareness. Out of habit I analyzed its style and meaning—obviously the New York School—perhaps impressionist-inspired water lilies with lightly colored brush strokes creating a reflection of the darker mid-section. Then I removed my thumb. [Scroll down to the bottom].

Artality: (är- tl-t). Artistic monism; specifically, the phenomenological unification of art and reality (courtesy of Fuchswörterbuch).

Art criticism? Am I the hammer that sees everything as nails, the newbie art critic blinded by the obvious in search of the obscure? Or maybe it’s not me at all; in Abstract Expressionism do we lose our common sense? Should I feel guilty for my politically incorrect faux pas? Was that the photographer’s intent, to mess with the cognoscenti?

So let’s just call it “Process Art” or art with inevitable unintended consequences. Or let’s just admit that all things are one, artality.

The small caption reads:
A woman and child wait for food in Mogadishu, where the government is teetering.

El Paseo Gallery Walk, March, 2008

Artwalk Gallery Writing Assignment

I missed the gallery “crawl,” so this paper reflects my sojourn into Saturday morning sobriety.

Melissa Morgan Fine Art. What a delightful find, a Clem Greenberg nirvana with an entire room devoted to his beloved “Post Painterly Color Field” painting. Perhaps taking a page out of the Arnason “playbook,” the Frankenthaler/Louis-inspired collection adjoins an Ellsworth Kelly-inspired “Hard-Edge” work which is also informed by Barrett Newman’s reductiveness.

UPDATE: March 23, 2011. J. Willcot is under new, tasteful management, but I'm leaving the post to demonstrate how bad things can get. J. Willcot. Schlock-decorative division. These works are purposefully designed for the culturally-vacuous wealthy. If you examine local demographics it becomes evident why Philistines trump Bohemians. Take Indian Wells, for example, http://zipskinny.com/index.php?zip=92210 boasting a nearly $100,000 (per the 2000 census, it’s much higher now) median household income while a whopping 60% of adults (age 25+) fail to complete a four year college program. Compare against Cambridge, MA (02142) with only 11% of the population failing to complete college and a paltry $57,000 in income. If one compared all US cities by creating an income/education ratio chart, Indian Wells would stand out for having more money than brains while Cambridge would similarly stand out as having more brains than money.

Imago Galleries. This free-standing postmodern structure contains monumental art too large for in-line stores. While definitely more sophisticated than “Casa Schlocko,” supra, I managed to overhear a couple chatting with a salesperson. Apparently, they had earnestly contemplated “art” and arrived armed with a “sophisticated” pallet including specific requirements. What artistic requirements? It had to fit on their Philistinian wall.

Despite the more-money-than-brains crowd, the collection is noteworthy. One piece leaped in my face.

Jun Kaneko

“Untitled Head” 2007

Cast Bronze

69 x 59 x 47 inches

[see attached]

This large, semi-smooth, head-shaped sculpture is devoid of facial features: no eyes, nose, mouth or even ears. An Archimedean/arithmetic (evenly spaced) patina spiral envelops the entire volume. This Op-Art spiral (is the swirl dark bordered by light or visa versa?) forces the observer’s gaze to its terminus, the centrally located “snakehead.”

* * *

Untitled Head denies evolutionary psychology, our primordial and universal expectation of two-eyed creatures. We anticipate hemispherical symmetry; eyes reflect and incarnate humanity. Whether love or hate, deception or joy, it’s all in the eyes… both of them. Eyelessness, cyclopsism and all manner of ocular abnormality unsettles us. Just think of the discomfort one may experience while conversing with strabismustics (people with crossed or wandering eyes). Also, eyes portray life and death. See Picasso’s near-death Self Portrait, 1972) (20.5).

Untitled Head evokes emotional disturbance. It obliterates visage with vertiginous spiral creating a retina-visceral reaction. I doubt other abstract designs, e.g., a mandala, or a nature-inspired spiral, e.g., the Greek “golden mean”/nautilus would provoke a similar response. As we search vainly for missing eyes, a vortex actuates our “extra-ocular” muscles jerking us cross-eyed. We become what we fear: the strabismustic. Vertigo may follow, head and guts reel.

Swirls generally activate primal fears, e.g., drowning in a maelstrom, falling down from vertiginous dervishing, and falling down from, or being killed by, cyclonic winds. Swirls can create a reality unsettling to the observer. See Munch, The Scream (5.18), and van Gogh’s ostensibly pleasing, but nevertheless disturbing Starry Night.

Several additional factors may contribute to a visceral response. 1) The central “snakehead” unleashes our primatial fear of snakes, 2) The mask-like qualities of the spiral serves to both obscure a “hidden enemy” while simultaneously eliciting an empathic response as the spiral “mask” “muzzles” the mouthless and suffocating person within, and 3) The “snakehead” is located at the intuitively powerful point of Ajna, the “third-eye” located on the forehead between the brows.