I Have a New Favorite Artist

Fall is here, and the ACBN couldn't be more ready.

Each new school year brings with it a new set of challenges–new subjects to grasp, new social structures to navigate, new car-line logistics t0 suffer through.

I probably should've seen this one coming, though.

Procrastination has long been a friend of mine–ask me how far in advance of publication I write these newsletters–so I can't say that I was totally surprised to find out that my son had a science project due in three days, one he'd known about for a full month. That seems like a thing I would've done. (That seems like a thing I have done.) Still, I wasn't thrilled, especially as my wife and I read through the project instructions and endured the universally-humbling realization that a sixth-grader's homework was, in places, well over our head.

This particular project required students to produce an optical illusion, then explain the science behind why the illusion worked.

"I'll help with the art part," I nobly volunteered, leaving my wife to handle the much-simpler task of explaining physics to a child.

"He doesn't even know what his illusion is yet," she noted, arguing a different point and foolishly leaving the previous one unchallenged.

"Wait, I have an idea! I saw something on the internet a while back. It was this artist, they did these perspective things that like, look concave when you're first looking at them, but then you look from another angle and they're actually convex," I explained succinctly and effectively, before going into another room to search terms like "artist who does perspective things that look concave but are actually convex".

The good news was two-fold: first, I hadn't imagined what I was thinking of, and second, it only took me about twenty minutes to pin this half-remembered piece of internet scrolling to the work of Patrick Hughes. A British artist credited with the creation of what I learned to be called "reverspective", Hughes has spent decades confounding viewers with delightful images like the ones in this video:

A third bit of good news materialized shortly thereafter, when I found online grade-school-level tutorials for creating works in Hughes' style:

With a handful of YouTube videos, a bit of coaching, a late-evening trip to the store for posterboard and an assist from my dusty architecture-school art supplies, we set him on a course to getting the art portion of the project done.

The written portion presented a different set of wrinkles, however.

"So, it turns out it's really hard to find the multiple sources the teacher is asking for on this particular topic," my wife reported. "Apparently the artist is super litigious, and sues anyone who copies his style." She directed me to Hughes' website, where alongside pages for galleries of his work, interviews, artist's statements and the like, he has a whole page dedicated to "Imitators". There, he denounces by name each person he sees as having knocked off his work.

It is an absolute delight.

This Russian creep closely imitates Hughes’ideas and thereby steals them. He is an intellectual thief and should be arrested.

Awful perspective, awful paintings, he should give up art and take up bee-keeping. A know-nothing who thinks he is interesting but he is not.

A hopeless old fart who has wasted his life failing to do anything with my idea. He has been successfully sued.

I think it's wonderful that anyone can forge a lasting career in the arts, and Hughes has done so for more than sixty years. I find his work enjoyable to behold in videos, and would surely enjoy it even more in person. He pioneered a technique that's unique and fun–one that's simple enough for a sixth-grader to comprehend and pay tribute to, but complex enough to reward true artistic skill.

I am, without irony, a fan of all of this.

But man, getting so good at something that you can dedicate a whole page to flaming your haters? He's living the dream.

Heck, he even does it for people he likes:

A nice man, who at least gives credit to Patrick Hughes. Has copied Hughes geometry and imagery. Unwisely puts pictures of people in his paintings.

(If you haven't watched the first video above yet, I encourage you to go back and listen far enough to hear Hughes' voice, because this stuff hits so much harder in a British accent.)

Art is art, but hatin' on this level? That's art.

Miraculously, fall arrived right on time this week, with temperatures dropping 20 degrees from Monday to Tuesday. I'm absolutely thriving in the cooler weather; my morning runs have been markedly-less-miserable and I'm finally getting to wear the new light jacket I bought over the summer.

Deep in my heart, I know that getting this excited about cooler temperatures in late September is the equivalent of turning my back on a horror-movie monster without making absolutely sure it's dead–but hey, I'm gonna enjoy it until we get that surprise 92-degree early-October day that inevitably comes.

Below the break today, I've got some thoughts on Eating Something Stupid, a lovely cocktail to kick off fall, some wonderfully-chill music, pets and more!