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When Vans cofounder Paul Van Doren died last week at age 90, one particular shoe a slip-on sneaker with a waffle-bottom sole and a black-and-white-checkerboard canvas upper took centerstage.
This is understandable; it’s the shoe that almost singlehandedly make that singlefootedly set the company on its way to becoming a multibillion-dollar action sports brand and it’s as instantly identifiable as a piece of branding as Nike’s swoosh is. It also does a disservice to the handful of silhouettes, and countless pop-culture collaborations in the last 55 years, that have earned the Costa Mesa-based, VF-owned brand a place in the hearts and shoe closets of millions of fans around the globe.
But is it art? A bitter lesson in not being completely uncultured
As an avid art lover myself, I must admit that I have also gazed in confusion at creations that I did not consider ‘art’. What could the artist have been trying to say by suspending a toilet in a gallery? Is it a comment on our society or just someone having a laugh? In this amusing piece by Lesley Stones, we’re reminded that our choice of art is always down to personal taste, but that there’s nothing wrong with looking deeper and asking questions to discover the artist’s intention. This article first appeared on FirstRand Perspectives.
William T. Wiley, 1966. Photographer unknown.
LOVING WHATEVER IT IS that you clutch to your chest and call “art” means taking some care of the culture around that word and its objects. It’s a positive gesture to some kind of eternity. It means you love the making of things, and you do not fear those things, nor fear or resent the artist who makes the things you don’t understand. You care for the artist who passively refuses to take part in whatever culture he deems damaging to his mind or spiritual well-being. These are the ways I want to love and the ways I believe in William T. Wiley, who died on April 25. I first met Bill Wiley in early January 2015. I was staying near his place in Woodacre and left a phone message asking if I could come by the next day. The voice on the call back early the next morning was barely a whisper: “This is Wiley. Stop over in a little while.” I did. Inside his modest red-barn studio was the sort of artistic effusion and palimpsest of crea
âAs opposed to the prototypes?â I asked. I sipped my black Gevalia coffee.
Ryan scratched his head, fluffing his sandy blond hair. âI don t think it s called a prototype in regard to painting.â
âPreliminary drawings then?â
âI think they re called studies, â said Ryan.
âI think you re right,â I said. âI don t think the artist studied too much, do you?â
âYou know better than I do,â said Ryan, âbut ⦠no. Wait. Do you mean Leah or Carson?â
âWe re calling him Pavel Shutka. Remember?â
âRight,â said Ryan.
The painting to the left was a tangle of rainbow colored lines with more open loops visible on the outer edges and more of a dense knot of colors at the center. The middle painting was similar with coiling lines that almost looked like an unraveling ball of yarn, only not as spherical or orderly, with some random black lines in the eye of it, which, from certain angles, made me
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