An Idea

I’m not sure whether it was the summer solstice or going to a Mixed Martial Arts class. But I think I hit upon an idea.

(Just as an aside, I got my ass kicked when I went to the Mixed Martial Arts class. After thirty minutes of exhausting exercises and another thirty minutes learning two very basic jujitsu moves, I was put up against Marty, a blue belt, who proceeded to throw me around the mat for about five minutes before twisting my arm into some horrible knot causing me to ‘tap out’. To Marty’s credit, he kicked my ass gently. But he kicked it nonetheless.)

Falling Down Man presents a dilemma. I really do believe that it has entered a very select club of paintings as a result of the USPS chucking a spear into it. Moreover, I think that it *should* now be worth quite a bit of money. But of course, I can’t simply pronounce that to be the case. True, I announced Charlie’s Law a few posts ago according to which Falling Down Man doubled in value. But the fact is, the value of Charlie’s painting remains something of a deep mystery.

So how do I proceed? That’s the dilemma. I want to trade Charlie’s painting for another painting. But how much should that painting be worth? What is a reasonable price to put on Falling Down Man now that it has become one of a kind?

I do not know the answers to these questions.

But I’ve decided that there is a way to find out:

An auction.

By holding an auction, I can let the market dictate a price. That might not be the ideal way to figure out Falling Down Man’s worth. But I’m not sure what other way there is.

In the not too distant future, therefore, I will hold an online auction. Because Falling Down Man concerns the homeless, I have decided to give 20% of the proceeds to a homeless shelter in Charlotte, which is the city closest to where I live. And I will take the remaining money and purchase a painting with it.

It won’t be a trade. But it should be an interesting experiment. And I hope that it will also allow me to move upward in my pursuit of a Van Gogh.

The Power Thesis

It’s amazing the lack of clarity that a lack of sleep brings on. But at least some of this seems to make sense to me at the moment.

I want to name another thesis. So I will. I will name it the Power Thesis, or PT for short.

The Power Thesis: Power trumps beauty.

What does PT mean? I’m not sure exactly. But I think a lot of people would accept it.

Conceptually, PT is a close cousin to another thesis that I will call the Time Thesis, or TT for short.

Time Thesis: Time conquers all.

TT, like PT, is appealing. Indeed, I’d likely declare TT to be even more appealing than PT, though I would of course understand completely why someone might disagree.

Yes, PT and TT are both appealing. But the fun doesn’t stop there, since PT and TT together entail what I have before called the Money Thesis, (though I must admit that I don’t think I could demonstrate the entailment – I blame it on the lack of sleep.)

Money Thesis: Economic value tracks aesthetic value.

And still the fun doesn’t end, since the Money Thesis and the following plausible thesis about the nature of value entail a radical claim about moral value.

Value Invariance Thesis: The fundamental status of value is invariant across domains.

If the Value Invariance Thesis is true, then what is true of aesthetic value, at least in terms of its fundamental properties, is also true of moral value.

The Money Thesis and the Value Invariance Thesis together entail what I shall call the Brick in the Wall Thesis, or BitWat for short.

BitWat: Economic value tracks moral value.

BitWat can be considered the core thesis in Economy Ethics, a relatively obscure but nonetheless influential ethical position.

If BitWat is true, a person’s moral worth is commensurate with his or her economic worth.

To my ears, BitWat sounds as if it must be false.

But it’s not that easy, at least from a conceptual point of view – you can’t just go proclaiming things to be false.

Why? Because BitWat follows (more or less) from PT and TT.

Yes, believe it or not PT and TT together get you BitWat. So rejecting BitWat requires rejecting either PT or TT.

Now, it seems to me that, TT has to be true – after all, time does conquer all. So I don’t think I would be willing to give up TT.

So it all comes down to PT. Should I give up PT?

Or does power trump beauty after all?

That, as they say, is the question.

Waiting For Mordot

It is funny how greedy I can be. I haven’t yet received an offer for Falling Down Man that I want to pursue and so have been wondering why the Universe has abandoned me.

But that’s crazy! It’s only been a few weeks since the Universe gave me a great gift.

The USPS chucked a spear into Charlie’s painting thereby doubling its value and allowing me trade up along the OJ scale. The Universe couldn’t have given me a clearer sign that getting a Van Gogh is a genuine possibility.

I should be reveling in its generosity.

But instead I already want more.

Of course, I haven’t done two things that I need to do in order to keep the Universe on my side.

I haven’t gone to an MMA class yet even though I feel certain that the Universe wants me to go to at least one.

And I haven’t yet told the Universe what I want.

But…I have laid the groundwork for both of these.

Last night I went to an MMA studio to find out how much the classes are. It’s $100 a month for an unlimited amount of instruction in ass kicking. I am going to go to a class tonight as a trial run.

And I have thought quite a bit about what I want from the Universe.

Charlie’s painting is now worth 4 OJ, which puts me one tenth of the way to a Van Gogh. If I could jump to a 10 OJ painting, I would be one fourth of the way there. And that would be pretty amazing, especially since two significant events are approaching.

The first is the one-year anniversary of the Van Gogh Project.

And the second is the summer solstice.

How awesome would it be to find myself one fourth of the way to a Van Gogh on the summer solstice just one year after starting this project?

I’ll answer that question: it would be pretty fucking awesome.

So, Universe:

I want someone to trade a painting worth 10 OJ for Charlie Spear’s Falling Down Man.
I want someone to trade a painting worth 10 OJ for Charlie Spear’s Falling Down Man.
I want someone to trade a painting worth 10 OJ for Charlie Spear’s Falling Down Man.

If anyone wants to trade a 10 OJ painting for Charlie Spear’s Falling Down Man, let me know.

1/10th of the Way There

I know it sounds crazy. But by my reckoning, I am just about one tenth of the way to a Van Gogh.

After Charlie saw the significance of what had happened to his painting, he said that he thought it had probably doubled in value. I agree. After all, as a result of its being damaged by the USPS, it entered a category occupied by very few paintings. And surely, such a fact increases its value.

Of course, there is no law in the art world that dictates Charlie’s painting doubled in value. But sometimes, when there is no law one simply has to make a law up. So I will. I will call it Charlie’s Law.

Charlie’s Law: When a painting undergoes a radical and accidental change thereby placing it in a completely different and more interesting category of art, it doubles in value.

Prior to being damaged, Charlie’s painting was worth 1.3 J’s. So now, after being damaged, it is worth 2.6 J’s.

The increase in J-value is good. But, as I talked about in a previous post, the measure I am most concerned with is the OJ. (Just as a reminder, an OJ is ten times the log of J. A cheap Van Gogh would be around 40 OJ’s).

After getting Jeanette’s Dora Maar, I wanted to see whether I could ascend the OJ scale. I had hoped to jump two OJ’s, which would be evidence that I could actually make it to a Van Gogh in a reasonable amount of time.

Well, prior to being damaged, Charlie’s painting was worth 1.14 OJ’s, which is good but not a huge jump.

But now, as a result of Charlie’s Law and basic mathematical facts about logarithms, Falling Down Man is worth 4.45 OJ’s, which is a little more than one tenth of the way to a Van Gogh.

It really is remarkable what math and a little help from the Universe can do.

Spear Chucking

If I were a lawyer, and I had to defend in front of the Supreme Court of Art the thesis that Charlie Spear’s Falling Down Man is not only an instance of the type – piece of art that was accidentally damaged by human agency but nonetheless improved or in some way completed by the damage – but is perhaps the purest such instance in the world, I would read the following bullet points in increasing volume until I was shrieking the last one as loudly as I could. Then I would bow and scurry out of the room.


I. Falling Down Man is about the homeless at a time when homelessness is an increasingly serious and troubling problem in the United Sates.

II. The United States Postal Service abused Falling Down Man. (Everyone who has seen the painting agrees that it is difficult to imagine what could have brought about such damage.)

III. The symbolic connections between the abuse of a painting about the homeless carried out by a government agency and the abuse that the homeless suffer no doubt at least partly due to the United States government are so obvious and so poignant that Charlie Spear immediately felt the painting had been taken to a completely new level.

IV. Falling Down Man was already, before the abuse, an eloquent painting by an extremely prolific, well-established artist.

V. Those who have seen Falling Down Man in person think that it has been added to and perhaps even improved visually because of the damage – there is now a three dimensionality to it that wouldn’t be there were it flat.

VI. Finally, unlike Duchamp's Bride no one has altered Falling Down Man since it was damaged.

Scurry. Scurry. Scurry.

I believe the Supreme Court of Art would rule in my favor. Indeed, the case seems to me so overwhelmingly strong that I can’t help but think that the Universe played a role in the whole event. It just strikes me as so terribly peculiar. I think that Charlie is right: there is more going on here than the mere physical.

In any case, I do think that this event calls for a new term of art, a term that denotes the kind of action that the USPS performed.

In honor of Charlie Spear, I will call such an act 'Spear Chucking'.

To chuck a spear is to accidentally damage a painting only thereby to bring about its improvement.

Very few have chucked a spear into a work of art.

The USPS, however, chucked a spear into Falling Down Man.

Little did the USPS know, though, that Falling Down Man would stand up and thrive as a result of their spear chucking.

One must certainly hope that one day the same will be true of the homeless that Falling Down Man represents.

Some More Loosely Connected Thoughts

One great thing about teaching at a college is the ability to send esoteric questions over e-mail to the faculty and expect some kind of interesting response.

A few days ago I asked my colleagues whether anyone knew of interesting examples involving damaged art that is deemed by the artist to have been completed or improved in some way by the damage.

I wasn’t disappointed.

Perhaps most importantly, someone reminded me of Duchamp’s name – I recalled the incident from an art history class I once took but couldn’t remember his name.

But I had many other great responses and interesting examples sent to me.

For instance, I learned about auto-destructive art:

Auto-destructive art is art that contains within itself an agent that automatically leads to its destruction within a period of time not to exceed twenty years. http://www.391.org/manifestos/1960metzger.htm

I learned about a British sculptor, Cornelia Parker, who likes to blow things up and put them back together. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornelia_Parker


I learned that the architects of the rebuilt de Young museum in San Francsico intended for the gradual corrosion of the copper exterior to be part of the artistic vision. http://deyoung.famsf.org/about/architecture-and-grounds

And many more things.

I also received an opinion about the category in question that concurs with mine. Ruth Beeston said to me:

I think that occurrences like you are seeking- where a work is "enhanced" in the artists' eyes as a result of an accidental or deliberate act by someone else- must be fairly rare. I'd be interested in hearing about any genuine examples you come up with.

I think Ruth is right. It does seem to me that the number of paintings of this type would be very rare.

But I also think that Charlie’s painting is one such instance. Falling Down Man may not be one of a kind; but it certainly is a member of a very small club.

I realize, however, that I haven’t yet made an explicit case for the claim that Charlie’s painting is a member of that club.

In my next post, I will.

Essence/Accident

I am feeling very discombobulated today. I had hoped to write an eloquent post about Falling Down Man. But I’m not up to it.

So here instead are a series of loosely connected thoughts.

Charlie's painting, as a result of its subject matter, its quality and its being damaged by the USPS, has joined a remarkably small group of significant paintings.

The most famous example of such a painting is Duchamp’s ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even’, which hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Duchamp_LargeGlass.jpg

A quote from Wikipedia about Bride:

Going home from its first public exhibition, the glass broke in its shipping crate and received a large crack in the glass. Duchamp repaired it, but left the cracks in the glass intact, accepting the chance element as a part of the piece.

In one of his notes about Bride, Duchamp wrote: “Can one make works of art which are not ‘of art’?”

Most interpreters agree that Bride was on the edge of what might be called conceptual art.

One could, of course, accept the cracks in a piece of art because one is ‘stuck with them’, or one could accept the cracks because in some sense they better or make more complete the work of art. Duchamp, I think, was doing the latter.

Duchamp was right to do so. The randomness of the cracks fit perfectly with the idea of art that is not ‘of art’.

Most people typically think of damage as decreasing the value, aesthetic and monetary, of a work of art.

But damage could increase value, both aesthetic and monetary.

The following is a category of art: a work that is accidentally damaged by a human agent but that is made better or in some genuine sense more complete by the damage.

This would be analogous to an accident modifying an essence.

There are examples of this in biology.

There are arguably other instances of this in the art world, though many of the most well known examples aren’t quite as pure as Duchamp’s Bride.

Some Examples:

The Liberty Bell.

The Venus de Milo.

The Sphinx.

Problems with the examples:

The Liberty Bell was a bell and so not ‘obviously’ a work of art.

The Venus de Milo would now look worse with arms but that is because we have become used to her without arms, not because the lack of arms completed her or made her better right from the get go.

The sphinx was not so much damaged as subject to a combination of decay and damage by a number of distinct individuals. Moreover, it may look weird were it restored now; but it no doubt looked absolutely glorious in its day.

Even Duchamp’s Bride is not a pure instance of the category. Why? Because he modified it after the damage.

There are, no doubt, many more examples.

I am more convinced than ever that Charlie Spear’s Falling Down Man is perhaps the purest instance of the type I have described. At the very least, it is the purest instance that I know of.

I will elaborate more in a future post.

Until then, if anyone wants to trade a painting for Falling Down Man, let me know.