{"id":199,"date":"2011-01-04T11:08:14","date_gmt":"2011-01-04T11:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artopia\/wp\/?p=199"},"modified":"2011-09-04T18:06:31","modified_gmt":"2011-09-04T22:06:31","slug":"the_decline_of_art_and_other_v","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artopia\/2011\/01\/the_decline_of_art_and_other_v.html","title":{"rendered":"The Decline of Art and Other Visualizations"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Pointillism or pointlessness?<\/span><\/font><\/font> <\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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Visualizations I Have Known: A Tale of Two Villages<\/o:p><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

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I am a fan of visualization. Because…when you think of it, all art is a form of same, right? Even paintings; particularly paintings. Visualization is a way of thinking and<\/i> communicating. My breakthrough was the braid. I was annoyed with the way the history of art is pictured, in words, but also in timelines and such, and well aware that the staircase model is false (as is the tree, no matter which side up). To change thought you need a new picture. I am not sure how the braid popped into my brain, but it did. <\/font><\/p>\n

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Finally grasping that Tibetan mandalas are meant to help you visualize entering a physical\/spiritual construct as if in three dimensions? Remembering John Cage’s notion that having at least five different things going on at once is likely to produce interesting results? Yes, and more.<\/font><\/p>\n

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The braid visualization made it easier for me to grasp the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the disappearances and reappearances of various kinds and aspects of art — and perhaps made it easier to explain those things to others. <\/font><\/p>\n

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But constant readers have heard all of this from me before; “weaving” in and out of my various essays. The braid has also helped me come to grips with my various pursuits. For instance, I can see five aspects of myself as interrelated: poet, artist, critic, curator, fiction writer. These roles are not at war, but interwoven. <\/font><\/p>\n

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And I am working on using the braid as a way of understanding the interrelationships of sculpture, painting, craft, architecture and design.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Because of the braid, I am interested in other kinds of visualizations, too: maps, graphs, diagrams — for their beauty as well as for their information. I am well aware that beauty and\/or logic can distort. Just because something is beautiful or logical doesn’t mean it’s true. Quantification is sometimes obfuscation. Truth needs to be tested.<\/font><\/p>\n

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That said, I confess I am fascinated by the new digital, zoom-in map derived from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and made available by the New York Times as Mapping America: Every City, Every Block<\/i>. It really seems to be true that for the first time in the U.S. Euro-Americans are a minority; therefore, “minorities” are in the majority. We are warned, however, that the data should be treated as estimates because they are based on samples. <\/font><\/p>\n

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You can chose maps for race and ethnicity, income, housing and family, and education. You can zoom in on your very own neighborhood to glean all kinds of information and, if you aren’t careful, misinformation. And you may be surprised. <\/font><\/p>\n

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I urge you to try it out right now by clicking HERE<\/a>, although I warn you it is a  <\/span>rabbit hole. <\/font><\/p>\n

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I learned many things I already knew. Rather, I had my random samplings and personal perceptions confirmed. Zooming in on the area around Tompkins Square Park, near where Jeff and I have lived since 1977 in the East Village, New York City, the apparent dominance of white faces is confirmed  <\/span>–almost all the way to the East River. That was not the case east of Tompkins Square, when in really ancient times I lived on 8th Street and Avenue D, with a great view of the East River, but also a southern view of burning buildings.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Tompkins Square Park yesterday…..<\/font><\/p>\n

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Tompkins Square Park today.<\/font><\/p>\n

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The funny thing about information is that you always want more. I want to see how the ethnicity of my neighborhood has changed. Not possible here. Judging by our own building, closer to Second Avenue than Tompkins Square, the traditional Ukrainian tenants are all but gone. One old Ukrainian lady remains, solely to fulfill her pigeon-feeding duties. In the ’60s when this part of the Lower East Side was renamed the “East Village” by realtors, most of the Slavs were sent into Jersey exile by bohemians of the artistic sort, citizens of that Bohemia famous for its nonexistent seacoast. Even our Polish-American landlord lives in New Jersey. Now, the neighborhood poets, novelists, filmmakers and artists have been driven out by NYU students who have well-off parents or gigantic bank loans to handle the sky-high tuition and exorbitant, free-market rents for still-tiny apartments — where plaster-board and designer mini-refrigerators have forced the roaches and rats back into the sewers. <\/font><\/p>\n

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On the new survey map there were some surprises. Obviously, annual income is up from 1977. But “truth” is in the details. I never would have thought that the census tract east of Tompkins Square — once infamous for B-ins and Smoke-ins, but now clean and well-groomed with a yuppie doggy run — had a higher median income than the blocks west of the park — until you hit the area between Second Avenue and The Bowery, where income jumps again, slightly but inexplicably. Same old tenement buildings. Maybe the one hi-rise on The Bowery is all it took, or somehow there are rich households hidden in the basement of the ugly-as-sin Ukrainian Church (1977)  <\/span>or in the backroom of McSorley’s Olde Ale House. <\/font><\/p>\n

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 And another village…..<\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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Bathing<\/i> [on Long Isand] by William Glackens, 1910.<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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                \"house.jpg\"<\/font>                                                                                           Mansion for Sale, Long Island, 2010<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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The Map Is Not the Territory<\/b>   <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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Hooked (beware!) and in order to illustrate more points, I zoomed in then on the little Long Island village where we sometimes go to escape noisy, latte-slurping students. Although not surprised that this celebration of the Neo-Colonial is 91% white, I was amazed that the largest concentration of African Americans is not immediately north of our picket-fence, Mickey-and-Judy village, as many presume, but somewhere far, far away in the middle of Long Island. <\/font><\/p>\n

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But every paradise must have its serpent. This charming village was once “restricted.” A sign of that is, literally, a sign once posted  <\/span>(c. 1910) on the village’s Fire Island beach that read, “No Blacks, Jews, Italians or School Teachers Allowed.” You won’t find that on any map, old or digital.<\/font><\/p>\n

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I also checked out the median income ($84,519 compared to our census tract in Manhattan at $53,405) and other factoids. I say factoids for a reason. It dawned on me that although it is probably true that the highest household incomes in Suffolk County are in the Hamptons, our Secret Village has more than its share of wealth. I know that one billionaire – we have one – does not a Hampton make, but because we routinely stumble across a few multimillionaires and an occasional celebrity at summer lawn parties on the Great South Bay, we began to wonder about the income picture. <\/font><\/p>\n

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Something doesn’t smell right. Four well-known New York art dealers own homes on the “good” side of the Village’s main drag. And some of the stately homes built by whaling captains before the Civil War and the hidden shoreline mansions probably require more for energy and upkeep than the Village’s median income.  <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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Do second homes count as households? <\/font><\/p>\n

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I asked a village friend if he had been quizzed for the census. Yes. But they were after persons who had primary residences and\/or were registered voters. Weekenders do not count and were not counted. So perhaps the actual wealth or the residents on any weekend in the summer season — or any weekend, since The Village is only an hour and a quarter by limo or personal BMW from Manhattan —  <\/span>is much, much more than the census estimate.<\/font><\/p>\n

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My spy also noted the current controversy over whether New Yorkers with second homes should be able to vote in local elections. The Village once allowed this. (Saltaire on Fire Island still does.) This controversy is boiling up in other staid retreats with concentrations of second homes all across the country. My friend claims that the one-person\/one-vote rule, used against second-home voters, is a red herring, since second-home owners would vote only on local issues in local elections. Anti-New Yorkers — some of them no doubt Tea Party acolytes — seem to have forgotten that  <\/span>“No taxation without representation” was once a rallying cry for a revolution. <\/font><\/p>\n

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Oh, even those who don’t pay taxes or own homes are allowed to vote for Village trustees. Sounds like a case for the Supreme Court.<\/font><\/p>\n

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In a nutshell, the census map in question is based not on perceptions but on abstractions, not only “households” defined by 20<\/font>th<\/font><\/sup> century notions, but – worse yet — locally determined census tracts,. The tracts on Long Island are not the straightforward ones superimposed upon the grids of Mannahatta:<\/font><\/font> <\/span><\/span>“The free city! no slaves! no owners of slaves!…. The city of such young men, I swear I cannot live happy, without I often go talk, walk, eat, drink, sleep, with them!” [Walt Whitman]<\/font><\/span><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

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To homeowners, realtors in search of premium prices and mere visitors, The Secret Village is what’s on the map you get at the quaint Village Hall: the area incorporated 100 years ago, the home zone that allows access to The Village’s very own Fire Island beach. The census tract, however, leaps over The Village’s  <\/span>legal northern boundary and incorporates the unincorporated, high-crime area just north.<\/font><\/p>\n

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The Census Bureau disclaims any responsibility for the determination of tracts and offers this as an explanation:<\/font><\/p>\n

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Census tracts are small, relatively permanent statistical subdivisions of a county. Tracts are delineated by a local committee of census data users for the purpose of presenting data. Census tract boundaries normally follow visible features, but may follow governmental unit boundaries and other non-visible features in some instances; they always nest within counties.<\/font><\/p>\n

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Designed to be relatively homogeneous units with respect to population characteristics, economic status, and living conditions, census tracts average about 4,000 inhabitants.<\/font><\/p>\n

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“Delineated by a local committee of census data users for the purpose of presenting data”! <\/font><\/p>\n

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Towards what end? Social programs? Funding opportunities? Real estate values? <\/font> <\/p>\n

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Is this a space alien, a prehistoric bird? No, it’s a gerrymander.. <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

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\"as127.jpg\"These are not weird jigsaw-puzzle pieces, but voting districts in Upstate New York, courtesy of Citizens for a Better New York.<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

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Be suspicious of maps. They are only tools. Just remember, in spite of a recent exhibition in Tokyo called “The Definition of Self”<\/a> <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font>you cannot really map the self. It might not exist<\/font><\/p>\n

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<\/font>\"Phantom <\/p>\n

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Phantom limb demo,”The Definition of Self”<\/font><\/p>\n

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And art? How many artists and\/or poets are there in each census tract? How many art critics? Can we see any numbers in regard to art in general? Not on the current map, but we can see some information on other visualizations now available, alas. And the state of art in general doesn’t look good.<\/font><\/p>\n

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