detlev, i think this thread was specially designed for you, your a classic case of intellegence gone to waste, in a couple pounds of negative meat.
with all that reteric, i think you know allot about other people, (who would probably not like you) but nothing about yourself.
in most cases not liking someone has more to do with you than the person you don't like.
but what do i know im from saarf London
i was on a long metro ride today the jeaunes were disrupting the train doors,stoping the train between stations a long time,earlier today there was further riots in the invalides area were the jeunes were demonstrating contra the cpe(the controversial under 26 new employment laws)their demo was hijacked by hooligans from the banilieux who were mugging the students and fighting the police anyway.
tonight i went to my friend tahir chemeriks presentation at the musee de decoration next to the louvre.there was lots of design students there.he was asked if he would take on assistants.he says yes as long as they pay him!he tells them he had to pay someone for years to teach him how to make jewellery.they must do the same.the jeaunes are non-plused.
With Samantha finally off my back and some serious networking to do, I took a deep breath, held back my shoulders and went into the party. “Carrie Bradshaw,” I said to myself,“you had better not screw up”.
The front atrium was the epitome of good taste. I noticed a series of Claes Oldenburg lithographs propped up nonchalantly on the one-off mirrored Boudicca dresser, a mammoth-sized elaborately carved onyx vase was poised on a Louis XIV gilt table replete with Malawian lilies and sabre-tooth orchids, each one lovingly dipped in formaldehyde for that chic-er-than-chic surgery aroma that had been taking all the most talked-about NYC salons by storm. Even Charlotte had caught the bug – just last week I caught her dousing her Park Avenue palace with the stuff in time for the arrival of her in-laws. The place reeked; I could have wretched with delight.
Penny’s floors were made of pure Madagascan chalcedony and I saw how over each huge window there were festooned cornucopias of black flowers and asphalt-coloured pomegranates nestling between concrete butterflies and drowning lyrically in multi-layers of luxurious silk, organza and fair-isle knitted fuse wire.
Just as Diane passed me a bottle of Rolling Rock, I looked down the Alexandros Arestis corridor conceit with its oh-so elegant Tudor-bethan cornicing. In one sconce I could just make out the infamous Ben Morris print of Lourdes Ciccone and THAT Bovril jar. But where was Penny? Everybody was talking over each others’shoulders, looking around for her. With perfect timing, just as the clamour for her was reaching fever pitch, a figure appeared at the top of the stairs. Was it her? Could it be? Had every single woman in Manhattan’s dream come true? Yes. Our heroine du temps was astride a giant seabird. And not just any seabird, but an albatross with a human face. As the bird took flight it became clear that it was the face of Sebastion: Penny’s current protégé and darling of the East Coast/ East Neuk fashion circuit.
After clipping Anna Wintour’s trademark green beehive the creature landed and Penny stepped into her adoring crowd. As she locked eyes with mine she extended her hand from inside her feathered muff, producing a long pink baton and handing it to me. It smelt faintly of mint and had the word ‘Crail’ written through it. What was it for I wondered?
To return this thread that had so much potential to topic, the frequent chasm between being likable and being a good artist was the big problem for the second wave feminists, wasn't it? Can't remember who did the big feminist hatchet job on Picasso -was it Griselda Pollock?- but he was clearly a man who could be vile to women. He painted them with teeth for genitals and screwed up all his lovers. Bad man, yes, but bad artist? it's a tricky arguement and depends on whether you can believe in the 'heroic artist'.
Morrissey is right (obviously) that you should just avoid meeting your heroes: artistic or otherwise. What if they let you down?
I judge an artist by his skill and creativity. I have no respect for the cliched actors, lacking skill and always having a lot to say. You don't need to have a 500 word artistic statement, your art should speak for itself.
picasso a bad man could be vile to woman?what about the second wave feminist valerie solanas and her scum manifesto-was she an artist?i love your writing detlev looking forward to episode 3 and finding out the semmiotic significance...deconstrucivist baktinian ...freudian slipper of the long pink batton inscribed with the word "crail"!!
Creative people may keenly feel that they and their work are indivisible, but I think spectators make the separation between the artist and his/her work anyway so their being deliberately obnoxious would be totally gratuitous. If really necessary being aloof, say, rather than plain vile, is self-protection enough?
OK, so you admire or identify with the work of a specific artist regardless of who or how they are. Why would you then be interested in the artist as a person? Might you hope that knowing what they’re like would in some way give you an insight into their creative processes? But even if they are accessible as people (could sup pints with them in their local and chat, or whatever), can you ever get closer to them than through their work? So, perhaps who and how they are is really immaterial – be they interesting, witty etc or boring, misogynistic, whatever – except that if you do dislike the artist as human being it might make the difference between you liking them AND what they do fairly unreservedly and just admiring what they do but with the reservation of disliking them personally.
From what I’ve read (dodgy memory permitting), for all his riches and success, and whatever else has made him the envy of other artists, in his own lifetime and since, Picasso died envying Matisse his serene creativity. Et toc?
Something has changed though? The emphasis seems to have definitely shifted to something very personal. I've been trying to think of a good example all day, and the best I could come up with is J.D. Salinger, about whom a lot of speculation may have been whipped but who was essentially allowed to be a (famous) recluse, where J.T. Leroy was not. "Salinger's silence is a kind of remedy for the disease of noise we all suffer from", says culture critic Ron Rosenbaum. "We are grateful to him for insinuating the sound, the spiritual gesture, of Silence into the cacophonous din of our cosmetic culture."
I lifted this lovely quote from here - http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/mag/2002/06/23/stories/2002062300330400.htm
It’s as though people no longer know, or accept, the difference between fact and fiction, a knock on effect being an inability to allow the separation between author and work, in certain cases at least. But if the work has value as a stand-alone object what does it really matter who or how it’s creator is? Or, why did the discovery that J.T. Leroy wasn’t who ‘he’ was supposed to be result in a media frenzy, and a kind of public vilification, when in a way it ought to have reinforced that author’s power and ascendance as a writer of fiction?
Ouf!
And I've managed to contradict myself! Previous post should probably begin with me say that I make the separation, not general people. Too much generalisation. Damn.
