A poem for the ages by Jay Jeff Jones (1946-2023)
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ET IN BOHEMIA EGO
“He liked paintings that his guests did not know how to look at.”
We’ve seen this type before, claiming the Universe has his private number, calling him up at any hour, something else putting those creepy ideas in his head. Perhaps that’s why his efforts have the whiff of botched miracles and half-practiced party tricks, Jaws in a Box, hunger’s trajectory caught in glass and sold down the river, a miserable, soul-eating ghost rendered to coffee table novelty, as cute as a scorpion drowned in Lucite. From the Virgin to Vanitas to Verity, he has the knack of giving art’s perpetual themes the tacky, replica look you’d find in Vegas and in a more existential mood, numinously confronts our mortal illusions with his fly-breeding bestiary, vivisected giant dolls or a memento cupido, Death not triumphant but abstracted by hype and blistered in bling, the crystal pustules of human misery, a customary garnish of tyrants and media sluts.
Cut from the same clown-suit cloth as Joe Messiahs, madcap artists are the stuff of fable, tribal lore, mawkish hymns, rabid scripture and other tragic clichés of payback time; for storming Olympus, stealing fire, the chariot, mother’s credit card; formulaic operas of retribution, with pratfalls all the way to rehab and pretentious arty cant that is the gift of the gods to tabloids. Then it’s fraud, conman, hoaxster thief, the jeers of the squares, fogies and philistines; all those schmucks that can’t see the joke. Down the Groucho, it’s a round for the house and the artist keeps having the last laugh; more Michael Jackson than Modigliani, an idea-jacking, joyless rider, who gets no kicks and cuts no trail, a toy-town Steptoe whose muse keeps coming up short, spinning action altarpieces for Burger King that conjure no dreamy universes like One, 1950 or a bunko show, death camp for butterflies, to flog butterfly print deckchairs, butterfly teapots and pots of butterfly marmalade to the culturati carriage trade. The artist’s virtual junk stall is open all hours so the fabulously rich can find art’s relief from ennui and the furious itch of wealth that has learned to virally reproduce. Surely, this much money must know what it is doing? It clearly did in Venice, where capitalism was born; and conspicuous consumption demanded Bellinis and Titians. Now it’s beguiled by splodges and spots and gauds. Nothing that’s difficult anymore like art’s real dirty work, the most gruelling atavistic forensics or wiping narcissism’s smirk with a sheet of flame. David Sylvester – “At what age did you realise that death was going to happen to you too?” Francis Bacon – “I realised when I was seventeen...I remember looking at a dog-shit on the pavement and I suddenly realised, there it is...this is what life is like.” Jay Jeff Jones
