MTA Art. Aviation Station the Green Line. Westchester.

At the Aviation Station in Westchester (Wikipedia has the zip code as 90048. It's 90045. That's about a few hundred thousand dollars difference in real estate world. Looking at the economy, probably about half a million dollars difference currently. Wiki can be wrong. And no one pays over one million dollars to live by the airport.) The Bus Bench went down to see specifically the quote by William Burroughs, but his quote had disappeared. We assumed the death of that quote was owing to vandals, but in his place we saw pieces of poetry by Kerouac, Ellison, Hughes and Ginsberg.

 

I can't imagine any of them on Los Angeles public transportation, maybe now, because it's trendy (and everyone's broke)  but they all seemed a bit too precious to ride the bus. Yes even Kerouac was precious (he did die at his mummy's house after all.) I don't know why so many people view him as some kind of counter cultural working class hero. Working class people have jobs, he never had one (he had a few jobs for a second, but he never kept up his employment the way true working class people do and I don't think it was out of any kind of political leanings.) Kerouac didn't even think that far outside the box. Liking jazz and being a Buddhist in the 1950s one would think would make your writing more universal.

A working class BEATISH poet (who was successful in modern day) is Bukowski.

Kerouac was from the 50s and he couldn't get beyond the white and male perspective. What a waste of privilege.

At least Burroughs transcended his class and wrote about something beyond just his little world, but of course it was colored through heavy drug use and his piece of writing is gone.

Maybe Burroughs' piece of verse is in some crazy poet's hovel in Downey? (We've got a picture of the Burroughs' piece. We'll post it later. It is somewhere in the dirty south right now.)

The art at Aviation was done by Richard Turner. It was a hodge podge of the 1950s. The good, the bad and the mainstream controversial of the 1950s.

As a regular rider of the train I liked the living room configuration of the chairs (and so did the other people, because we had to wait awhile before we got a picture of the living room set.) They are comfortable for a public transit waiting area. It makes the people sitting in them look like bizarre paintings, if you're into people watching. There are three sets of living rooms. Very nice.

I don't judge public art on just it's artistic merits. I judge public art on it's function.

I liked the function of Turner's pieces. I liked reading pieces of Kerouac and Hughes. It is a nice brief little break from work, home, work, home...now if only they had a bar and a wireless router, I'd have a new home with a slight view of South Central (any time you see more than two black people, you're in South Central.)

After 1940 "the corporation" realized the power of public art and after WW2 "the corporation" effectively sedated it.

Now public art goes through so many hands an artist can't truly create his or her artistic vision. It's an artistic vision that is filtered through bureaucracy. You get what you get. The most outlandish ideas end up looking a little silly and the more sedate ideas end up getting a boost. Currently the best "artistic" public art is most often done by the least creative people, who are friends with (or lap dogs for) the richest people and who can "work" with people.

Working with people is never a good quality for an artist. Diego Rivera tried to do public art in America and it was whitewashed, which shows what happens to good public art.

I shouldn't have brought up whitewashed murals. Now some of you are going to bring up that LA River mural. My opinion on that. It was ugly and not political. Graphic artists who work for Coca Cola and do graffiti on the weekends aren't artists. If art isn't political it isn't art, it's graphic design.

My hate for the average group art project is only rivaled by my hate for group art shows and poetry anthologies.

Cooperation is for political movements, corporations and kindergarten. Artists can be part of any one of those movements, but their vision can't be corrupted by opinions and teamwork.

Art at it's best is one nut's narcissistic fantasy of their view of the world. It's one person's attempt to sum the world up. It's universal and it's emotional. It's emotional with no back story or public relations campaign. And if an artist is good he or she can do this over and over and over again. A good artist can see the world beyond themselves and show it from the front, the back, the side, the top and the inside.

The truth is something that is difficult to showcase, if it has to be approved by artless liars first.

-Browne Molyneux