Lesbian Porn
I was 64, a typical artist who supported himself with teaching adults gigs at the art school, the university, and as a volunteer art therapist at long-term care. None of these gig economy rackets pay the rent. So I worked in another gig economy doing courier from the hospital for Alberta Health, paid by the piece, no benefits, provide my own car, everything from vaccines to doctors to thousands of pounds of dialysis liquids to patients in their homes.
Then I had the most common serious injury, for no known reason with no known treatment, that happens at any age, I had a stroke.
After 6 months in the hospital learning to walk, talk, swallow and doing everything with my non-dominant digits, they kicked me out. I had found an accessible apartment and a roommate to share the expense on my brand new seniors pension.
Suddenly I was a senior. In Calgary. A very religious, conservative, read: fascist, city. Seniors are expected to conform. Or be called inappropriate and therefore excluded, isolated, culled from the herd. I have always found the thought of conforming amusing. This is called ‘a bad attitude’ I have been told. I ’cause problems’ by questioning authority.
In the art world with the years of formal training to be considered a professional, there is a process not unlike religion where there are rites of passage to prove conformity to the centuries-old traditions, read: indoctrination. I surrendered to this at age 40 so could gain qualifications to teach and have my work as a painter considered for places like the National Gallery of Canada, i.e. to get past the gatekeepers and get my work in front of the high-paying upper classes. And most importantly to earn the right to be thought of as ‘he’s an artist he can do anything he wants.’
It turns out that any moron who owns a gallery can affect an artist’s reputation. They don’t like the artists doing whatever they want. The artworld is more conservative and fascist than most religions, except yoga, they are worse. Tons of bullies and narcissists running smear campaigns, just because they can.
Most people running galleries are former failed art students with an axe to grind. Sort of like Hitler. These creatures decide you must conform well enough to not besmirch the reputation of the gallery. The quality of the work is irrelevant to the quality of the conformity, looking good in public is what counts.
Representational art and formal abstraction are preferred. Hitler threw out any artist that was not representational; Mussolini’s followers developed what is known as graphic design today. The Bauhaus was destroyed. Fascists to this day run the printing industries; everything must be flush left or centred, there will be order! aka best practices.
During art school, I worked part-time in a gallery and did my practicums in them as well. Weekly average visits might be 20 people. Today, I show on the internet, weekly visits in the millions, brick and mortar guys hate that. Galleries make their money by picture framing, not selling art, using art as a draw. Glorified fronts for the picture frame industry like Larson-Juhl out of the Puritan USA who decide what your business conforms to or you don’t get supplied.
So, no lesbian images for instance as that is considered porn. Porn is for titillation and not Puritan. It wouldn’t matter to these creatures if Rembrandt painted it.
Goya painted La Maja Desnuda in 1797 and was hauled up before the Inquisition as a heretic, the work” sequestered” between 1814 and 1836. When the Spanish put the work on a postage stamp the Puritan Americans banned all letters bearing it, in 1930. In 2021 I used the painting as an avatar on the American social networks Twitter and Facebook and was permanently banned from both. Apparently, the female gaze depicted in the work is titillating and pornographic, harmful to the community somehow.
So getting back to my story, I’m recently out of the hospital and the local seniors club has been notified to contact me to do ‘activities’ such as crafts and painting lessons. The very conservative recreation coordinator called me up and demanded of me, ‘What do you do for an activity?’
‘Lesbian Porn’ was the only appropriate answer to a nazi. She was very literal, ‘We don’t have any of that.’
Well, OK then!
