Jayel Aheram's Articles: The Consequences of Art

Accomplished styl­ist Glamma encour­ages fel­low artists to put their best face for­ward, while Matt Hecht explores the rela­tion­ship between arti­fact and sac­ri­fice in this Issue No. 2 of Jayel Aheram’s “Articles.”

Put Your Best Face Forward

“I am the prod­uct, tat­toos and art are my business.”

Glamma

The media is inun­dated with a never-ending stream of “B” celebri­ties pitch­ing the lat­est diet crazes or look good, feel bet­ter prod­ucts. Gaunt super­mod­els, plas­tic celebu­tantes, Hollywood stars, and even pseudo stars of real­ity tele­vi­sion grace every cover of the tabloids. Simply put, we live in an image-conscious soci­ety. We are cau­tious crea­tures of habit, some­thing that often causes us to look before we speak. We are judged by how we look and often step out in pub­lic “wear­ing a per­son­al­ity.” What are we with­out an image to por­tray? What can we do to become part of the main­stream mar­ket known as self-promotion?

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Art and Artifact

“It is in sacrifice—willing, hon­est, com­mit­ted sacrifice—that an artis­tic arti­fact is born… It is up to the indi­vid­ual, as audi­ence, to seek out arti­facts, and for the artist to con­tinue suf­fer­ing for the sake of them.”

Matt Hecht

As a stu­dent of the clas­sics I have always found myself drawn to the allure of mankind’s past achieve­ments, those efforts and arti­facts of “divine inspi­ra­tion” or royal van­ity which so defined much of what we know of ancient Egypt, clas­si­cal Greece, and the Renaissance. Past artis­tic achieve­ments which we still main­tain define civ­i­liza­tions with sys­tems of aes­thetic value that seem far grander in scope than our own societies—with our advanced tech­nol­ogy and global economies—can pos­si­bly muster.

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