A few notes off the cuff as it pertains to the aesthetic of realism during the 19th and 20th century in relation to The Wire. More than anything I am trying to encode the reading I am doing because if I don’t do this (or something similar) I will lose. Part of this reemergence into school is trying to understand myself as a learner and how to optimize for maximum absorption of information.
The rhetorical tradition was for a very long time predicated on these three domains: to teach, to move and to delight. During the Renaissance and thanks in part to Kant, the first domain was deprioritized from the aesthetic (I am not replacing rhetorical tradition with aesthetic, I am not sure if that is correct). The point is the goal of teaching byway of aesthetics was increasingly removed and thus the main implicit focuses were to move and to delight.
The thrust of real realism (as distinct from Naturalism) and the Marxist aesthetic is to do all three.
Dickens did this. Dickens was a true Realist in that his work did all three. It has been criticized that the realism of Dickens was often hyperbolic and with overly comic characters to be Realism. On the contrary the 19th century Marxist aesthetic would claim. Later generations of Marxist would attempt to decouple the realism aesthetic from the Marxist one for the reason that the realism (of say Dickens) was too exaggerated. It is fundamental to the Marxist aesthetic that the premise of “to teach” stays baked into the ethos. The intentional muddying of capitalism is too powerful to not aspire to educate the audience.
The Wire is not this. The Wire not only distances itself from Dickens (despite making reference to Dickens often) but ultimately does so in relegating the scope of the show to “Wire World” aka Baltimore and not expanding the scope, and thus the critique, to the entire country as a whole. For this reason and others which I will mention later it is regarded as a work of Naturalism instead.
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In modernity the aesthetic and the didactic work at incompatible ends. Meaning that the expression of beauty through paintings, literature, poetry, cannot simultaneously educate.
A few more notes before moving on. It was the work of Dickens and other 19th century writers that really helped unite the realism aesthetic with the Marxist one. For both traditions the “to teach” motive was foundational. Later generations of Marxist would attempt to parse the two aesthetics for the reason that the exaggerated features and elements of the realist aesthetic (which often illuminated the most truth) were in fact cause for the decoupling.
The reason The Wire is regarded as a naturalist work is primarily because of its focus on Baltimore and not the US and the world at large. It fundamentally only critiques the world of Baltimore while presenting it in such a way, with complex inner workings of its own internal systems, that it appears to be a complete entity. Jameson would call this the two Americas, the real and the hyper real, the 3rd world and the 1st world, the post industrial and the super state. It is only in season five does The Wire square this circle in a way that “teaches.”
In short, that is my reading of the text assigned to me in the aesthetics of realism class. In news more personally related to my painting career I brought the Rosemary painting to the gallery today, it will be framed and in theory connected with a buyer soon. I heard back from the Orlando mural gig (I did not receive an invitation), but it is always nice to at least hear back (yes, that is how low the bar in fact is).
So it’s another day in the life of a freelancing painter. The remainder of this week will be spent finishing the mural that I will admit I have lost a little steam on. Fortunately it is almost complete and with its completion will be the culmination of this massive wall that commands amazing real estate on the East Side of Downtown Houston.
This month there is another big mural thing to apply for. I have a sneaky sense that there is a real possibility here if I am to apply myself fully to this application. As far as studio paintings are concerned I will say I hit a small wall right now but I’m okay with that. I think I need a few days to breathe outside of the studio and let the pieces put themselves together. The pieces I am referring to are recent print outs I made that I am collaging together with a still life to endeavor to compose what will be an interesting painting. I want to make excellent compositions that serve as roadmaps for paintings that are ultimately resolved from memory and imagination. I will invent color and shape after the map has been disposed of. But what I am in the process of doing right now is making a very compelling map. A map that doesn't look like a photobashing of my favorite images this month.
I am fascinated by this idea I read in my Realism reading this week about an aesthetic attempting to reconstruct an actively deconstructing world. I am thinking about this as well as a juxtaposition between the real and the hyperreal within a picture. I am torn essentially between painting like Matisse (painting beautifully and painting like the world isn't in ruins) or painting pictures more laden with symbols that refers more to the condition of the state of existence in 2025. I suppose I have just laid out a hell of a problem for myself, talk about squaring a circle a la 2 Americas.
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