by Jerome du Bois
Today's Phoenix New Times provides us a valuable peek into the thudding vapidity, and tuneless mediocrity, that passes for thought among some Phoenix artists and art critics. In a piece called "Golden Boy," Benjamin Leatherman interviewed Isaac Fortoul, 25, who just opened Stay Gold gallery in the heart of Roosevelt Row, and transcribed without comment the marvelous wisdom, the pearls that poured from Fortoul's mouth:
His brand of art: I'm primarily a painter, but I also like dabbling in different mediums and styles. Like, next month I might do a film, or photography, or sculpture. I enjoy all art, and I don't like to be pigeonholed into one thing.
Everything he touches turns to gold, doncha see, and stays that way, because he's an Artist.
Themes:I try to find beauty in everyday things, walking down the street and observing what's going on. One piece I did, it was just a pair of dragonfly wings. People might say, "It's just wings," but I find beauty in the color combinations, the geometry of the wings, and how they were formed.
Oh, Pidgeonholehead, I know what you mean! but I've never never never heard it expressed quite that way before! Like with rainbows, right? and oil slicks, and the reflections in a fly's eye! Or the softness of a baby's skin . . . Oh, I could go on --
Graphic design: I've done flier design for music artists in Japan, logos and stuff for nonprofit and environmental organizations in Colombia. In New York, I've done corporate identity stuff. I've even done porn sites.
And when he opens up his gallery, what is the sign in the window? He taped the cardboard stencils for the letters S-T-A-Y-G-O-L-D to the inside glass. Look at the top picture in the article. And while you're there, and we're on graphic design, note what image choices the pros at New Times made to illustrate the article: two photos of Fortoul, a restaurant logo he didn't design, a picture of his boots, the cover of The Outsiders, and finally one of the artist's paintings, which is faithful to the predominant sketchy cartoon surrealism rut these artists seem stuck in. One example of his so-called work. (Oh, and thanks, twit, for making money by contributing to the continuing degradation of women. You fit right in down there.)
Getting paints: We'll trade paints, share paints, some paints are donated. If you gotta buy some at Home Depot, little schemes like getting paint mixed and telling them it wasn't the right color, returning it, and then when they put it on the marketing rack, buy it for half the price, stuff like that.
Somebody call Phil Jones or Greg Sale -- I know, the Governor! -- and get this guy a grant. You know he could stretch the money, since he has no problem stretching ethics.
Stay Gold: Gabriel [his brother] came up with it. It comes from The Outsiders. It means to stay young, stay fresh, stay creative, stay true to yourself, keep it real, for the rest of your life if you can. When you're young, you're gold.
No, Fortoul, you're neither. You want to be a boy, a kid. Young men and women, right now, some of them seven years younger than you, are showing real gold on the battlefields of our war. There's real gold in my father's medals. Nobody, not the strongest artist, can rob gold of its meaning, much less a little tin pygmy like you. You may be true to yourself, which I have no doubt and which is a horror, but you're not young, fresh, real, or creative. You're a cookie cutter shaped like a zero.
Multiple Mr. Pyrite above by a couple of hundred, and you've tapped the shallow, hollow core of the downtown Phoenix art scene: Stay Bored.
Posted by Jerome at November 11, 2004 10:18 AM | TrackBack