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Intro to Anarchy. John Carroll Long: Artist with a Twist
By Andrea Clark Brown
Often behind writings of brilliant humor is an author who is a serious student of human nature, global events, human beliefs, histories, movements, philosophies and discoveries, be they physical, spiritual or scientific. These are disciplines and life practices that have an impact on all mankind. More often than not they have the power to alter our thinking and change our world for good or bad as experiences that touch all in one way or another.
Humor can be profoundly on point by exposing unforeseen connections between the incongruous or absurd with perfectly common human actions that reveal an unexpected, striking, undeniable truth. Through words, caricature and actions, these provoking synapses between incongruities elicit personal identification, laughter, tears or sighs with one’s own recognition of an imperfect self, as if facing a mirror.
John Carroll Long, Red, White, Black and Blue, 2015. Courtesy of UP ART and Design Gallery - Contemporary.
John Carroll Long, the Michigan artist and humorist who in the late 1990s and early 21st century earned a national and international reputation as a highly published cartoonist and provocateur, has now, in his South Florida studio, turned his considerable artistic talents away from humor toward his intensely focused quest to expose what many non-believers may consider “the scary truth.”
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Long’s mastery of narrative through his recent production of philosophical writings that accompany and are reciprocally supported by his fine art collage, painting, illustration, mixed media morphs and setups assembled for an upcoming exhibition that he aptly names “Intro to Anarchy” show demonstrably that he has shed his prior levity to favor an artistic edge of “unsafe” and non-PC inquiry. His mission: to bring to question an ability or lack thereof of art to have a profound effect on one’s core values. “Would we be comfortable with an art that does that, and is that not the mission and fundamental purpose of art, to make one reflect on one’s beliefs to distinguish between fantasy and truth, to offer exposures and discourse to illustrate what is fiction or reality in human beliefs and experience?”
Offering compelling collisions between opposing schools of thought and the fundamental impact of choices made in this world, such as peace or religion, goodness or greed, science or dogma, equality or politics, Long’s artworks and writings dare to lead one into a perilous realm of self reflection as to what might really be what we should be all about.
Through his writings and artworks, he has suggested that our world is at the edge of, if not in the midst of, anarchy by virtue of conflicting absurdist fantasies that have made believers of those who fear the visceral reality of a life that has a beginning and an end. Long’s congregations of both subtle and pointed conundrums are openly in view as visual and verbal artifacts in his “Intro to Anarchy.”
After great personal contemplation, Long has come to an important turning point of his own. In his words: “It may be the ultimate irony that if we hadn’t spent so much effort in the support of our individual religions–that are probably not true anyway–we would have evolved so much faster, and maybe, just maybe, earth would already be more like heaven.”
“John Carroll Long: Intro to Anarchy” opens from November 13 through December 11, 2015 at UP ART and DESIGN GALLERY Contemporary. 340 8th Street South. Naples, FL, 34102 | www.upartanddesign.com
Andrea Clark Brown is an architect and curator based in Naples, Fla.
