The Many Facets of Art Taco

Something you will not see in this blog is me telling or suggesting to other bloggers what they should or should not be doing. It is simply none of my business. I write this out of  love for art and the people who make, show, fund, support and report on it. Note there are no ads, nor is there a gift shop anywhere on this blog. Nor is anyone paying me.

Doing this costs me money.

I do hardcore reviews of shows and some works on an individual basis. This facet deals with the work, its ontogeny and context. Part of this is critical, part educational and experiential.

You will find many Seen/Scene blogs which consist mostly of photographs. Why? Because I was there, took the photographs and for various reasons I either do not have the time or inclination to do a more in-depth review yet the show (or gallery) deserves mentioning for a multitude of reasons.

There are many articles that look like an Instagram dump. They aren't. Imagine Vasari having images of the artists he wrote about at work. Or us having good photos of the happenings at the Cedar Club, Montparnasse, etc.  I did. This too, is part and parcel of the Art World. The people are as important as what they make, and inextricably entangled with it. The social context in which the work was created matters to me. I bypassed it in the beginning, but it is too important for me to dismiss. 

Time is always a pressing issue, and not just the lack of it, but its passing. A few months into this gig, I realized I was unwittingly writing a history of the arts in the area. Add up the major corporate media reviews, as I have, and you will find they average 4-5 reviews a week. They understandably focus on the major institutions and galleries. Everything else, as Roy Batty says on Blade Runner, is "...lost, like tears in the rain.". This added a sense of urgency to my blog writing, which is not to say that it should be important to anyone else.

It matters to me.

How I wish I had correspondents and more guest bloggers to be able to cover more people, works and events in the area. I desperately need a knowledgeable music reviewer as well as a spoken word/poetry one, but I realize that the combination of no pay, time and money spent is not for everyone.

The above is why I do not waste my time with negative reviews. Educational as they would be, and fun to write, they do not appear here. Why? Because there are too many good artists and shows that would go unmentioned while I devoted time to weak work and shows. Many strongly disagree with this, and I have no quarrel with them. On any given day they can start their own blog(s) and lead by example.

I do post arts events ads every week, independently and in the Weekend section. Some are straight press releases, again, due to lack of time and that some times they're as good as anything I would write.

All of these windows upon the scene are essential to me, and still, every day feels like untold stories, work, artists, exchanges slipped through everyone's fingers. I realize this is a losing proposition, but sometimes when the light is right, and reverberating prismatically through all of these facets, for a jewel-like few moments it is enough to keep me going for a long time.


--- Luis