Remember the Anderson's?

This family image was a standard in the 1950s. I grew up with the Anderson's and other television families such as Ozzie & Harriette and the Beaver. Andy Griffith, son Opie, and Aunt Vie were the ideal single parent unit.

That ideal is still in the hearts of a very few parents today but they are now a rarity and statistics are proving it is so.



From the PEW Research Center comes this finding July 1, 2007.
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/526/marriage-parenthood
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As Marriage and Parenthood Drift Apart, Public Is Concerned about Social Impact

A Generation Gap in Behaviors and Values
Younger adults attach far less moral stigma than do their elders to out-of-wedlock births and cohabitation without marriage. They engage in these behaviors at rates unprecedented in U.S. history. Nearly four-in-ten (36.8%) births in this country are to an unmarried woman. Nearly half (47%) of adults in their 30s and 40s have spent a portion of their lives in a cohabiting relationship.

Cohabitation Becomes More Prevalent
With marriage exerting less influence over how adults organize their lives and bear their children, cohabitation is filling some of the vacuum. Today about a half of all nonmarital births are to a cohabiting couple; 15 years ago, only about a third were. Cohabiters are ambivalent about marriage – just under half (44%) say they want to marry; a nearly equal portion (41%) say they aren't sure.
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What is the ideal family today? What does this mean for YOUR own children and future grandchildren? A scary thought.

Consider the Ozzy Osborn family image. I fully expect to be attacked for pointing to this likeable rag-tag Ozborn family but their philosophy of life, behavior, their adoring fans, and the media who gives them publicity, are just a reflection of today's twisted values and morals. It is twisted. They try to be friends with their children instead of parents. Their children are beyond respectful of any one or anything and forget either of them submitting to any authority but their own.

For me this is an absurity in a twisted culture.

What is today's standard of behavior? America for the most part has none.

Now, understand this. I know the great evils of the 1950s and 1960s. Evil existed but it was surpressed in our day. The racism, the immorality that was going on in spite of those pure images was deplorable. I am glad that racism was exposed. Man is just as sinful now as then. That is not the issue. However, when you compare today's culture that the near past, I personnally would rather live then. It was more wholesome, more moral, and a more eithical time generally speaking for the majority of people because shame was present. Evil was absolutely evil. Unfortunately with the religion of secular humanism and the rejection of absolutes, America has slid down hill culturally speaking.

Today "good" is being called evil and evil is being call "good."

Isa 5:20 - "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"

The difference then is this: evil was not accepted as good by the masses.

LOST FOREVER . . .

That wholesome image of the Anderson family was encouraged at school by our teachers, and re-enforced in our school literature. Christian values were always the under lying unspoken theme. Whether one is Jew, Gentile or atheist, those Christian values never hurt anyone. My homeroom teachers usually read a verse of scripture to the class and we had a short prayer to start our day. That was a good thing; today it is considered evil.

Our culture was so different from todays. Want to know the biggest problem in my high school in the early 1960s?


The terrible problem of gum in school. What else is there to say? (In my whole school I think there was about a handful of girls who "had" to get married and they usually did.)

Since I am a person of deep Christian faith I can welcome innocent children into this world. Yet, I worry how hard it will be for my own children and future grandchildren. Fortunately, they have a strong faith and I know that that will sustain them in their marriages in spite of this culture.

This blog is to remind us all of what we are up against.

Art or Entrepreneurship?

Here is one example of today's great art.

Would you love to own this?

This skull by artist Damien Hirst, represents the most costly piece of modern art ever created. With a price tag of 100 million dollars, this skull is covered with over 8,601 pavé diamonds (the big pink diamond in the forehead is 2 million dollars alone).

It is a platinum cast of a skull from an actual person who lived between 1720 and 1810 and whose teeth are still showing but the rest of his head is covered in diamonds.

Is it morally ethical to use a human skull this way?

With his bones exposed and used this way, It is surly a privacy issue, and an exploitation of the dead. I am certain the dead man didn't give the artist permission to use his skull for profit and fame. Hirst writes that the diamonds he chose were "ethically sourced", whatever that means. So, desecrate the skull but I guess that getting the diamonds from an ethical source gives him the ability to tap-dance all the way to the bank without any guilt.

The actual cost for creating this sculptured piece of jewelry was just 20 million giving Hirst a cool 80 million dollar profit. Is this art or is it just a very clever entrepreneur who produces art solely for profit. Who would want it except the investment world of art or some museum. After the shock and awe it's value is really in question. The whole art world is being scammed.

So what is art?

One of the most meaningful classes I took to earn my degree in art was the Philosophy of Art 101. My rather brilliant Baylor Professor stood up on the first day of class, and made a statement that has stayed with me all of my life and caused me to think deeply about my chosen profession. (I deem any professor "brilliant" if I still remember what I was taught after all these years.)

That day he said something like this. "What is art?" .... A long dramatic pause and a little impish grin for his retorical question. "Art can not be defined, however, this semester we are going to define what art is. We will study what artists, philosophers, sociologists, psychiatrists like Freud, writers, famous art critics, and a host of other great thinkers and what even the governments believe on the topic: 'What is Art.' You will over the next few months attempt to define the meaning of art. On the last day of class you will discover that art is impossible to define." With that he closed the book and dismissed the class.

I was a stunned art major. I said to myself, "Well, if I can't define art why on earth am I an art major?" Maybe that is why I went into graphic art and advertising instead of fine art.

Now, after a 30-year career, I am turning from graphic art and advertising to fine art. Once again, I have been thinking about that class. I am glad that professor proposed this dilemma but I think now -- no longer an impressionable kid -- I believe he was right and wrong. Art today is broad when once it was narrow.

The "art" that artists like Hirst is producing just may be the art of entrepreneurship.

This is art. Would you want to own this and display this in your home?

This is what I would give the rest of my life to accomplish. Profits are not the motivator.


Johannes Vermeer's "Girl with Pearl".

Motivation

M o t i v a t i o n - i.e. the general desire or willingness for someone to do something.

That seems so simple. It's not. After coming back from vacation, I have all this pent up desire to create art and find an inablility to do any thing productive at all. I need complete quiet and no distractions but life is full of both noise and constant interruptions. Ugh.

Monday morning is my day to get back to it. Maybe my deadline is what I need.

Self Sabotage: How to Overcome?

Look at the haunting eyes of an artists tormented with frustration.

Sabotage of self = frustrations out-of-control.

Biographers say van Gogh was mentally ill when in a fit of rage, he pursued his friend, Gauguin, with an open razor, and finally, subdued by his friend, ended up cutting a portion of his own ear lobe off. Some say it was a fit of epilepsy but that was clearly a conscious act. I agree, the artist was out-of-control mentally but what caused it?

Frustrations. His quest "to comprehend the spiritual essence of man and nature" and project it upon canvas in a new way bucking conventional wisdom literally frustrated him to death. His inability to deal with his passions and frustrations ... wasn't that one of his root problems? Not long after that incident, depressed and despondent, van Gogh did finally take his life. Suicide is the final sabotage of self.

Van Gogh's artistic temperament had gone out-of-control leading him to this desperate act "for the good of all" his suicide note read. No one was there to help or encourage him for he was forging art in a direction that had never been taken. His inner demon of frustration cut his life short, yet his work is admired and treasured today.

Regular people will never understand the struggle-taking place in an artist. Yet, every artist needs some encouragement. They need to learn how to deal with their ever-present frustration.

Great artists of the past sabotage themselves less drastically. Out of frustration, paintings were painted over and started afresh, or even destroyed. (I wonder how much great art was lost because of a fit of frustration; how much art is lost today?) Unable to get past creative blocks, many artists’ productivity diminishes.

How to overcome frustration?

Keep working to improve skills, and don't expect anyone other than another artist to truly understand your drive. Learning to cope is just as much a growth process as learning to draw, to develop compositions, or mix colors.

The world will never understand the artist. Recognition of this is important. This is what I have learned:
• Learn to ask for help from the right persons.
• Learn to ignore unworthy criticism.
• Remain teachable.
• Ignore those who criticize your explosive temperament.
• Do not destroy your work for at least a day or two.
• Do not remain blocked.
• (Most important) trust God completely and accept your inadequacy.

"What is so blasted important?" the world asks, "It's just a pretty picture hanging on the wall. If it improves the space it occupies, that's good enough. Why all the agony and frustration over a pretty little picture?"

Artistic temperament doesn't make sense to regular people who stand in puzzlement when they encounter the extreme passions and frustrations that boil inside an artist. Art is a furious passion. Insecure egos are placed on the line and easily crushed by criticism, or blown out of proportion by praise. It is like a roller-coaster ride for most artists until they reach a point where their skills are sufficient and finally the ego is stabilized. Finally self-confidence destroys much of the frustration associated with creating and completing art but it takes a very long time to get to that point (I am finding).

No artist can explain that passion to create for we don't understand it ourselves. (Right?) It is an obsessive drive. We are creators. To an artist looking at the complacency of the world it is bewildering. We wonder why anyone would want to exist without great passions ... even with all the turmoil ... it is better to live a short life that is full of passion rather than a long boring passion-less one.

Artists get frustrated; it's their temperament. Don't expect the world to understand; don't expect the artist to understand the world.