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Artblog.net Turns Ten

Post #1602 • May 8, 2013, 4:21 PM • 2 Comments

Artblog.net posted its first post on May 5, 2003. That means that I have now been blogging here for ten years. There was a 20-month hiatus in there somewhere, during which I kept a journal, and at several points I disappeared for a month or three, but here I am, looking at a lot of web-based projects in the rear view mirror. Greetings, Iconoduel!

Back in 2003, blogging was the Next Big Thing. I consider the Golden Age of Blogging to have taken place 2004-2008, and Artblog.net was there for it, enjoying protracted comment threads and an antagonistic stance against the mainstream media. In 2008, Facebook and Twitter caught on big, and by then most of the mainstream media outlets had blogs. By 2009 most of them had Facebook pages and Twitter accounts as well. The conversation about art and other matters moved there and has been there ever since.

Why keep at it? I could supply reasons if pressed. I enjoy looking back on my thinking circa three or seven years ago. Through the blog I can revisit episodes like the implosion of my gig at Street Miami, The Great Escape from South Florida, or my misadventure in California. I don't miss overseeing long conversations, hand-editing out the spam, but I enjoy rereading them on occasion—many of my better insights about art were forged in them. I own this platform, and can shape it as I please. People who are leaving their intellectual history on Facebook, as far as I'm concerned, might as well not be preserving it at all.

But if there's one thing I've learned about art in the last ten years, it's this: reasons are for fakers. There are a lot of people involved in art who might as well not be. Their justifications for why they do what they do are lengthy, erudite, and ready at hand. But genuine citizens of the country called Art toddle from one bewilderment to the next, their path only making sense as they look back on it, if even then. On good days, that which their true self desires intersects with the realm of the possible, and a shaft of light falls upon them. Reasons don't enter into it. You might as well ask a cat why it stretches out in the sunny spot on the floor.

And with that, I'm going to go paint.

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