In just four years, we’ll be celebrating the 250th anniversary of our grand social contract. Here’s a challenge to you to paint what challenges us.
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| Breaking Storm, 48X30, oil on linen. Available. Apparently, every time I paint the flag it involves a boat. |
In just four years we’ll be celebrating the 250th anniversary of our grand social contract, the United States. At my age, it’s not unreasonable to wonder if I’ll make it. I have no doubts about Uncle Sam; he’s tough.
I was 17 at our bicentennial. The world should have been my oyster, but that wasn’t exactly how it played out. My older sister and brother had died in two separate, horrific accidents. Every memory from the time is tinged in bleak.
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| Six bucks a pound, 12X16, was painted in 2020 when lobster dropped to that price. It was $7.70 on my local dock on Friday, at the same time that diesel fuel has doubled in price. Not everyone is getting rich in the current inflation spiral. |
However, I loved history, and I spent lots of time with people much older than me, people who decorated their homes with antiques, debated the strategies of the Civil War, and pored over Eric Sloane books.
I never believed that there was any hope I’d live long enough to see our semiquincentennial (my beloved siblings having set such bad examples), but I’ve never doubted our nation’s fundamental toughness. We’ve been through far worse—civil war, repeated cycles of boom and bust, political corruption, world war.
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| Striping, 6X8, oil on canvas, available. |
Interestingly, we’ve never suffered a famine. The economist Amartya Sen has argued pretty persuasively that famine and democracy are inconsistent with each other. Famine occurs not only from a lack of food, but from inequalities in the food-distribution systems. While the Dust Bowl and the Year Without a Summer produced local hardship, people could and did vote with their feet.
When I hear young people talk about us having approached the ‘limits’ of democracy, I remind them that, as they love to eat, they have a strong interest in preserving democratic institutions.
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| Safety check, 6X8, oil on canvas, long gone to another home. |
At 17, I’d have been surprised by the issues that convulse us today—not because they’re so different, but because they’re so familiar. I have a foster brother who came out as gay in the late 60s, I am from a multiracial city, I lived in a Jewish neighborhood, and abortion has been legal in New York since 1970. Race, religion, sexual preference and abortion are discussions that have been going on for my whole life. The difference is the bandwidth they take up today. We had just exited the Vietnam War at the time of the Bicentennial, and that was where our hearts and minds were concentrated.
However, there is a difference, and it has to do with our reaction to violence. In May, 1970, the National Guard fired on anti-war rioters and killed four students at Kent State. The nation was convulsed, and that event galvanized anti-war opinion. Last week, 53 illegal migrants died in an overheated tractor-trailer in Texas and we just hunker down and wait for the next catastrophe. We’re inured to death, which is a very frightening thing.
I don’t want to add to the ugliness of the world, but I do think it’s time to think about bigger issues. The problem is that social-justice art doesn’t pay, which is why I have a storage-room full of the stuff. But sometimes these things need to be painted.
My friend Mark suggested I create a challenge to artists to paint about social justice, and to post their work publicly. To this end, I have created a public group is on Facebook, here. I ask just three things:
- The work be genuine painting, not just billboards of angry words;
- We must respect differing opinions and try to understand the thinking that went into work with which we disagree;
- No political arguments; if you feel strongly, paint your feelings, don’t engage in verbal invective. I’ll just delete the comments.
And on that note, happy Independence Day! Enjoy your cookout!