Why I Curate
The Importance of Tastemaking and Artistic Literacy...
I’m in the library writing this, and sat on my home-away-from-home (read also: the desk) is a 1988 book by Barbara Baer Capitman with photography by Steven Brooke. It’s called Deco Delights, and concerns itself with the Art Deco architecture of Miami Beach down in Florida. I had just finished thumbing through a coffee-table book about mid-century San Francisco, and this streamlined tome made for one hell of a chaser. Have a nip of the stuff:
Pretty cool, huh? I sat by a window thumbing through these two books. Not a note of music in my ears, just myself, the light of a morning sun shining through the third floor, and pages upon pages of time captured and beauty immortalized. And for once, I felt alive again. Felt alive in a way that I hadn’t since college, a feeling also felt in a library, working on something I cared about. Could’ve been anything at the time, but the sensations both then and now were the same. It came as a quiet revivifying of lifeblood, born not from the where and when of my own person, but of what I was delving into and that lone moment of purity to experience it.
Today’s essay is a prescription. What I’m writing about here has worked for me, and it can work for you. I acknowledge that we’re all our own animals with our own ways of being, our own tastes, and our own approach to both our crafts and our support of others, but what we’re about discuss transcends all of that by its very nature.
What I’m talking about has many names. I call it curation and tastemaking among others, but those are the keywords. And what they all mean to me is simple: to explore the works of all mediums, across all styles, and to identify that which speaks most to you and your vision as an artist. Whether in literature, film, music, fine arts, the works. It isn’t for the purposes of organizing an exhibition or for the sake of judging a contest. It is meant for you and you alone, a place of comfort and freedom to learn about the many crafts of the world and find what sings loudest of all. What sings loudest of all to YOU.
It is in this pursuit I feel the perpetual outsider.
There is nothing too high brow nor too low, no style beyond consideration. The only barrier to entry in my canon is the matter of what resonates with me. Some works do, and some don’t. It isn’t something you can fully intellectualize. A lot of it is a matter of sensation, that ephemeral feeling a work sparks within you. Works of abstraction can stir my soul just as readily as a masterstroke of Hudson River School romanticism. A feature-length Mahler symphony can light the fuse of my mind’s eye as readily as a two-minute punk song or a rap record can. I try out anything and everything I can get my hands on, and what really socks me in the gut and sets the brain alight, that’s the work to grab ahold of and hang on to.
This, again, is where I seem to lose a lot of people.
Some only care about contemporaneous relevancy, unaware that the most successful of contemporary craftsmen have a robust knowledge of their medium’s history and can actively trace the lineage of their work back through the past. To pull at a random thread, while certain corners were flipping shit over the billion-dollar metamodern toy commercial that was Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, the director herself mentioned in interviews an affinity for the pastel-colored musicals of French New Wave legend Jacques Demy, such as 1964’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.1
Others are the primitivists that go all hog-wild about “RETVRNING” to traditional pre-20th century standards, reviving the ghosts of Michelangelo and Rembrandt to “sAvE tHe WeSt.” And yet, they appear unable (or unwilling) to either learn these forms and techniques themselves, or finance those who can. And in the absence of action, they turn to what can best be described as academic zealotry, convinced that being passive-aggressively demeaning online will be a means of willing this Nouvelle Renaissance to fruition. The results have been less than promising.
I lay at least 90% of the blame for these opposite numbers at the feet of the deranged sociopolitical state of the West (the remaining 10 on the debasement of education). This isn’t a “left” thing, this isn’t a “right” thing, this is a matter of unvarnished cultural, critical, and creative illiteracy. The inability to savor all that is not “on my side,” the inability to go beyond what “the message” is, coupled with a life spent glued to “discourse” and current events. It is a state of being best described as sticking your head in a toilet bowl as it flushes in perpetuity.
In short, the mother of all swirlies.
I don’t seem to suffer from this though. I’ve been floating around circles where people lean remarkably far to the left at times, and I’ve been in places where plenty are on the hard right. And I don’t come in presenting myself as some centrist wunderkind either; I have my own ways about the world and I’m sticking to them. But in everything I do, I am an artist first.
This appears to be the big hurdle to clear, because for every one of me, there are dozens who put politics on the highest pedestal of their being, and when they realize the health of culture and arts intersects with such a matter, suddenly arts and entertainment become their problem…to bitch about. I think it is safe to say that the days of whining and crying about Star Wars and Disney and superhero films is coming to an end, but I don’t think the pundits and the many brains they’ve rotted in the interim will be going quietly into that good night. And yet, I also don’t think any of them have a damned clue what to do about it in the absence of pitching a fit.
If one truly wants to make a difference via the high and popular arts, then one must understand what their true power is. It is a strength that lies not in the propaganda of ideas, but in emotional power and aesthetic resonance. The arts are experiences through which Man comes to understand himself in a variety of ways. What turns us on, thrills us, inspires us, revolts us. The stories told, the moments in time captured, an ineffable magic that arrests one’s attention. The best way to improve your ability in reading and savoring these qualities is by exploring every medium. And the only way to find out what truly sings for you, entertains you, and reveals these parts of the human condition to you is by trying everything you possibly can! Read all sorts of poetry, dig into short genre stories as well as great literary novels. Take in all the films, albums, and games you can, savor every possible work of fine art you can behold.
For creators, these will be the keys to unlocking your true potential. When you’ve found yourself overflowing with a unique cocktail of influences and knowledge, shaken or stirred to your liking by that grayish-pink blob of yours we call the human mind, you will be able to do anything you set it to, so long as you remain dedicated to both your newfound vision and the honing of your technical abilities. You can write that story, record that song, make that film or game, all because you went out and saw the world through those ancient, eternal Technicolor eyes of this beautiful beast of Man’s design we call art. I learn from the abstract as well as the classical, the genre as well as the literary. I seek, I devour, and I come out the other end with a greater understanding of myself as a connoisseur, as a craftsman, and as a person.
And for audiences in need of an antidote to the mundanity of modern entertainment, guess what? You get to try all the cool shit! When you tuck away all the prejudices that modern technology and modern sensibilities have instilled in you, you may find yourself refreshed beyond belief when diving into works whose ideas and ways about the world have been made so alien, it’s like stepping into another dimension altogether. Where passions were sincere and a righteousness in conviction abounded. A time when a strong sense of aesthetic vision, matched by a powerful emotional core, conquered any haywire optical effect or monophonic mix dressed in vinyl static.
So, how does one curate for themselves? In the Information Age, it may seem daunting to the point of impossibility. If you’ve ever felt intimidated by a fully-loaded library, with shelves upon shelves exploring everything you could possibly want to know, then Information Age is like the final boss of your worst nightmares. It has blessed and cursed Man with an index to rival a thousand Libraries of Alexandria.
Fortunately, I got a helluva regime you should try, and it all starts with the wise words of an American legend.
Writer and dreamer par excellence Ray Bradbury gave us budding authors a few rules for good hygiene in our craft.2 Two big takeaways were to write one short story a week for a full year, and to read a short story, a poem, and an essay once a night for “a thousand nights,” which is Ray’s way of saying “do this for the rest of your goddamned life!” For the sake of self-curation, that second part of the regime is the foundation upon which I will base my own.
So every night, you’re digging into a short story, a poem, and an essay. No restrictions on topics, authors, nothing. You might find yourself pinballed from a story out of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Orsinian Tales to a romantic poem by Poe to an essay about the evolution of silverware. No limits, no restrictions, just start throwing these darts once a night, every night as routinely as possible. Hell, slip a chapter of a novel or a comic book in if you’re feeling adventurous.
Next up: listen to one full album of music a day. It’s tempting to hit shuffle on a playlist and just let the random mass of tunes wash over you, but take time out of the day, whether on commute, at home, or before you go to bed, to experience a record in full. Whether classical, popular, or leftfield, savor what the album means as a complete body of work. The way it sounds, the kind of songs sung and music played, the way the mood shifts from track to track. Listen and let it all sink in.
To switch from daily to weekly, the next item on Dr. Calta’s itinerary is a challenge. I challenge everyone reading this to watch at least one motion picture a week, more if you can swing it. In this workaday world, it’s a pain in the ass to sit down and watch a concentrated work of creative energy like a film. You’re pulled in a million directions, and when you get home some nights, it might feel impossible to pick up that book of Teddy Sturgeon stories or your Peanuts omnibus. Some placate the audiovisual beast by binging television, but that binging can easily become a passive consumption no better than listening to “lo-fi study beats.” After a while, you’re just not engaged with the work anymore. To experience a self-contained dramatic statement or a high-octane work of entertainment, without interruption, does the soul wonders. The real magic of the movies if you will.3
And lastly, the free-time prescription: something you do when you have the spare second. First, buy yourself a nice coffee-table book. A book of paintings, illustrations, photographs of sculpture, architecture, matters of mechanics or science, whatever you like. And on a day when you’re home and you have a moment, grab the book and just start thumbing through it. Don’t even read the captions; just savor the image.
The fine lines of a Googie-style café, the perfect form of a planet like Saturn, the jazzy jaggedness of a Cubist-era Picasso. Just look, and find one picture that knocks you out, a true love at first sight. Lock that in memory, dogear the page if you have to, and see if you can buy a print of it somewhere. If you can’t, try and find a high-res scan online, and print it off your home printer. Get yourself a nice frame for it, and put it up somewhere you can admire it, like your home office or your living room.
And the purpose of all that? You just found a muse!
It may not be of the classical variety, but if you “choose” wisely, it should be a particular work that you can turn to as a source of inspiration. The match to strike when you need to rekindle that flame of yours.
I do not impose demands of style, taste, or decade because that’s not what this exercise is about. It’s about finding what speaks to YOU! But you also can’t find that out if you haven’t tasted the breadth of Man’s artistic pursuits. The only thing you have to lose is maybe the odd two bucks on a streaming rental or a twenty if you’re smart and can find that artbook at a thrifty bookstore. But what you have to gain is seeing all that Man has been and all he has yet to be. There is no greater truth then that goddamned Scorsese line I keep going on about, but for posterity’s sake, let me reiterate: “Study the old masters, enrich your palette, expand the canvas.”4
Through this campaign of self-curation, you can enrich yourself beyond your wildest dreams, and through that enrichment, find the bedrock of your craft, and your support of others’ crafts. Those powerful muses and influences that will stir you to action, whether in creating your own great works or funding and buying the works of others. And together, if enough of us take up this centuries-old banner, the future will be brighter and more beautiful than you can ever hope to imagine.
I’ll leave you with the man who saw you at the door, Vincent Price. The Hollywood legend, renowned for his remarkable voice and brilliant blend of class and camp in his acting, was also an art collector. And in 1962, he took his campaign of bringing the arts down from on high to the people of America by partnering with a company seeking to do the same: department store giant Sears.
The end result of the partnership was The Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art, a uniquely populist program in which Price trotted across the globe, buying up original works of fine art, and making them available for sale through Sears at their prices, with their payment plans and money-back guarantees in tow. No reproductions allowed! The campaign lasted for nearly a decade, and in this promotional film, you will find what must have been one of the greatest coups in the art world at the time: Price’s purchase of The Angel Appearing to the Shepherds by Rembrandt.
Allow me to reiterate: an ORIGINAL Rembrandt etching, one of the Dutch artist’s most famous, one which in 1962 was already a staggering 328 years old and had been passed between some of the greatest collections in the history of art including that of the great English painter and collector Sir Thomas Lawrence, was made available for purchase at SEARS-ROEBUCK.5
I’ll let the rest of promotional film do the talking, but Price’s determination to bring art to the public is an inspiration I find endlessly rejuvenating. Collecting was not just for the wealthy elites of the world nor those locked away in their ivory towers. He believed it was a joy to be experienced by all people. To quote the man himself, “art is the visual experience of Man made exciting by talent.”
To that I add: if all people can have that chance to truly enjoy and experience art, without the burden of the day’s politics gnawing at your brain and replacing that capacity to savor brilliance and beauty with talking points and other nonsense, you’ll find that there are greater strides yet to be made by all of us.
Do your thing, Vinnie.6
Source: Greta Gerwig discussed her watchlist for Barbie with film review platform Letterboxd, a list featuring several of Demy’s films. In this clip, she goes over her inclusion of 1964’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Source: One of the best renditions of this routine came from a 2001 keynote address called “Telling the Truth.” The address was part of the Sixth Annual Writer's Symposium by the Sea, sponsored by Point Loma Nazarene University.
Side Note: I also find that short films are a great way to tide yourself over in the absence of a feature. The only real hurdle these days seems to be the sourcing of them, with many short subjects being held captive by distributors as mere “bonus features” or landlocked in boutique releases. This specially curated playlist, Speculative Cinema, I hope will be an antidote to the problem. It’s heavy on animation and abstract film but that will change as I add to it. So if you’re ever in need of a quick A/V pick-me-up, we got you covered!
Side Note: If any of you start a drinking game with this blog based solely on that quote and every mention made of Harlan Ellison and my sci-fi pulp series 365 Infantry, I claim no responsibility for the imminent demise of your livers.
Side Note: According to a retrospective on the program by Artists Network, the Rembrandt was priced at $900 in 1962. Combined with the knowledge that monthly payments started at just $5/Month, you could hypothetically have brought home one of the greatest works of art in the history of Mankind and have had it paid off in 15 years for the low monthly price of a KFC Family Bucket. If that ain’t the American Dream, I don’t know what is!
Source: This standard-definition print of the Sears training film about The Vincent Price Collection was sourced from the Internet Archive.
An Addendum: This is just a short list to account for any mediums missing from the article.
TV Shows - I bad-rapped their modern mode of consumption, but a carefully curated program of quality television is a great way to unwind and study short-form storytelling. Pick a few episodes of a few different shows and watch them in sequence, that way the potential monotony of a marathon can’t take hold.
Radio Shows and Audiobooks - To be enjoyed when you can. I’ve found myself listening to them while mowing the lawn and on long walks. These enablers of the mind’s theater are highly encouraged.
Video Games - Ah, the great reliever of stress! Interactive media is very worthwhile engaging with, and is naturally one of the most immersive experiences we have on hand. The key is how you budget your time. I see nothing wrong with setting aside the time for gaming provided you put a cap on it. That way it doesn’t reach the same numbing of mind that a TV binge can have. As the old saying goes, there can be too much of a good thing.
What an inspiring read my friend!