Two Odd Peas: Same Pod

To Celebrate the Day in Color and Form: American Master Bill Rane

Tom Wolfe & Bill Rane: Challening the OP, the Pop & the "art" defined by theory alone.

Tom Wolfe, 1975: Reveals the Inside Job

He blew their cover: Art Establishment Revealed as Emporer Without Clothes

Probably No Contemporary Could have Delivered the Goods on the False Premise of the American Art Establishment as Effectively as Tom Wolfe.

In 1975 Tom Wolfe penned his seminal work, The Painted Word. He alone demonstrated much of the truth of the American Art Establishment. Why was he so effective at debunking the multimillion dollar world of high society and its uber ellite coddling of particular icons that were more about word games and social elitist institutions, and illusions, than anything about visual truths? In all likelihood, with apology to Mr. Wolfe, he simply outplayed them at their own game.

He brought an intelligence and insight from his own life that he then reflected back upon against the cultural "ruling class". He showed, without flinching, that the American Art Establishment had become single handedly political and that its critique was more along the line of a Machivellian power scheme than anything human or creative let alone anything that could address, my God, "beauty".

After all Tom needed neither introduction to words nor explanation of words--painted or otherwise. Indeed it was only his "literary" brilliance that allowed him to recognize what he saw about what they put in words. Tom earns our respect here at The Bill Rane Story because he alone pulled the truth out of the trash when it came to the silly but damaging games that were in play.

In fact, he never claimed to be a man of the canvas only one of the word. He recognized that the American Visual Arts had been infected and overwhelmed by the very type of sensibilities (written social theory) that he had mastered as a writer--not as a painter.

He was wise enough to know the difference between a piece of paper and a piece of canvas and did not claim mastery beyond the pen and page.

Tom left it for others to be the painters of the visions. It was enough for him to point out those who were painters all right but only of "the written words" masquerading as the "other" side of human artistic expression.

In spite of Mr. Wolf's death blow, and giving credit due for the huge shift that has occurred since 1975, it also clear, unfortunately, that to some degree many of those games of painted words are still in play, in spite of Tom's great work.

We figure that Tom did, indeed, land the death blow but that the stupid corpse still lingers and even twitches--now and then. We figure some extra work is in order as in the Dracula movie where the monster might come back to life if later clean precautions are not taken . . . like drenching the body with holy water.

Jou Jou, 40x30???, Oil on Canvas, Late Taos Period

WARNING: Do NOT attempt driect translation to WORDS, Actual Viewing is MANDATORY

Here at the Bill Rane Story we reason that Bill and Tom are a great one-two punch. We believe that a coming Post Modern Era in American Art is at hand. An era that does not twitch when words like 'pretty', 'spiritual', 'valuable' (not meaning money), and 'painterly', are spoken. And an era that can even accept that a painting might be part of a story--a reflection of inner human experience that is meant to be shared with others.

We see the coming era as one where what is on the wall matters beyond a mere illustration of a convincing, even compelling, jargon or theory.

We think, that as Bill's life, and his active era in producing his body of work, is passed and passing, there is coming into view a new dawn in the American Arts. Our core belief here is that this era provides an important ballast to counter a materialistic United States of America that has forgotten its Ancient, and Eurpoean, roots--and the libertarian roots of its deeper aesthetic, as laid out in that cultural bible, "Leaves of Grass" by Mr. Walt Whitman. Not all truth can be put into words. Pen and paper has its value but so does canvas and brush. They are not the same and it is indeed silly, if not much worse, to theorize that they are.

This new Era makes no apologoy for suggesting values such as beauty, harmony, and proportion.... new values, yes, but the timeless ones too. Such values only made new again by the intervening age of the Painted Word exposed by Mr. Wolfe. Wolfe played the narcissim out, but our response is not nihlism but the embrace of the light itself; if any word might apply, we suggest "hedonism", the love of life in its living. Part of living, in our view, suggests that there is nothing wrong with the notion that the value is on the "canvas" and in the "eye".

While they never met, to our knowledge here, Mr. Wolfe and Mr. Rane turn out to be two peas in the same pod--strange bedfellows these two--Mr. Wolfe, perhaps the more socially elegant of the two; Mr. Rane, clearly the more gentle. Bill probably could never have landed the death blow that Tom seemed to rellish in delivering. But Mr. Wolfe's point could never stand against the furthest test of history but for Bill and men and women like him who show, and ultimately even prove, visually what Tom was so kind to reveal by written thesis and stainless logic.

It strikes us here as perhaps no accident in this quantum wired world that Tom [an undeniably great writer and journalist] published the Painted Word in 1975--and the very next year, 1976, saw the publication of Bill's Talfulano completed. Mr. Wolfe, sold untold copies in many editions, Mr. Rane but a single edition and a handful of copies--but they were as if of one thought in a complicated, fraternal, sense.

It is no small irony, that it took a man of words, a genius of words, really, to catch pants down those who thought oil paints were a typewriter and point out the Emporer, while fat, nonetheless wore no clothes. The Bill Rane Story acknowledges a serious debt of substantial gratitude for Mr. Wolfe and his enduring, valuable expose.

Tom Wolfe [The Painted Word, (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975)

The Painted Word by Tom Wolfe is copyright material. All World Wide Rights are Strictly Reserved.

Jou Jou is courtesy RANE Gallery, Taos, NM, Judith Rane, Director, and Hallie Susan Rane, the Artist's Grand Daughter. All rights are reserved.

All quotes on Professor Davis' presentation are from Jacques Derrida, the very important late twentieth century French intellectual. These images are used as fair use but Professor Davis wants to expressly thank the Jacques Derrida Estate and all of his heirs, administrators and trustees. These quotes may not be further distributed and may not be used for any public purpose or commercial gain whatsoever. Speical thanks to the Jacques Derrida family and heirs.

All Bill Rane paintings and images are fair use and property and copyright by Bill Rane's successors, heirs, administrators and Estate.

All images fair use; copyright by the artist(s) and/or their heirs, successors, administrators or Estate.

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