Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
John Fante
Just started reading John Fante's The Road to Los Angeles. An amazing rant by Arturo Gabriel Bandini after he decided that his chosen vocation of writing was too difficult (after a 30 min. attempt) and that perhaps philosophy would be easier.
"A Moral and Philosophical Dissertation on Man and Woman, by Arturo Gabriel Bandini." Evil is for the weak man, so why be weak. It is better to be strong than to be weak, for to be weak is to lack strength. Be strong, my brothers, for I say unless ye be strong the forces of evil shall get ye. All strength is a form of power. All lack of strength is a form of evil. All evil is a form of weakness. Be strong, lest ye be weak. Avoid weakness that ye might become strong. Weakness eateth the heart of woman. Strength feedeth the heart of man. Do ye wish to become females? Aye, then grow weak. Do ye wish to become men? Aye, aye. Then grow strong. Down with Evil! Up with Strength! Oh Zarathustra, endow thy women with plenty of weakness! Oh Zarathustra, endow thy men with plenty of strength! Down with woman! Hail Man!
Then I got tired of the whole thing. I decided maybe I wasn't a writer after all but a painter."
"A Moral and Philosophical Dissertation on Man and Woman, by Arturo Gabriel Bandini." Evil is for the weak man, so why be weak. It is better to be strong than to be weak, for to be weak is to lack strength. Be strong, my brothers, for I say unless ye be strong the forces of evil shall get ye. All strength is a form of power. All lack of strength is a form of evil. All evil is a form of weakness. Be strong, lest ye be weak. Avoid weakness that ye might become strong. Weakness eateth the heart of woman. Strength feedeth the heart of man. Do ye wish to become females? Aye, then grow weak. Do ye wish to become men? Aye, aye. Then grow strong. Down with Evil! Up with Strength! Oh Zarathustra, endow thy women with plenty of weakness! Oh Zarathustra, endow thy men with plenty of strength! Down with woman! Hail Man!
Then I got tired of the whole thing. I decided maybe I wasn't a writer after all but a painter."
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Robert Storr
In an interview in The Art Newspaper, Robert Storr, critic, curator and dean of the Yale School of Art, was asked "what kind of advice are you giving art students now?"
Storr: I'm telling them that this is actually a fine time to be in art school because, when I was in art school, when a lot of people I admire were in art school in the 1960s and 1970s, there was no money. If you go into it knowing that you will probably not be rewarded lavishly, but you can in fact continue to work, you're o a much better footing than if you go into it trying to make a huge impact when you're 23 or 24, and then maintain that for the next 60 years. You know Jonh Baldessari is someone whom everyone admires, but people by and large forget that he destroyed all of his "successful work" and started all over again. I'm interested in people who make good art, whenever they make it, and I think a lot of the best artists today are late bloomers. I'm a big fan of both Raoul De Keyser and Tom Nozkowski, who I put in the Venice Biennale (2007). Tom is 65 and Raoul is 78 and neither one of them really hit it until they were way past the age when most people think it would be the end of your career.
TAN: Maybe there's less of a focus on the cult of youth.
Storr: There isn't less of a focus yet, but it's going to dawn on people that it's not working. It's always nice to be a coming attraction, but it's murder to be a has-been. If it hasn't happened for you yet, you can at least console yourself with the idea that it might. It's a fashionable world and even good artists go out of fashion. If you've never really thought about what you're going to do when you go out of fashion because you've never been out of fashion, it's much harder to take than if you've gradually come into your own, gotten through difficult times and know that you can survive.
Storr: I'm telling them that this is actually a fine time to be in art school because, when I was in art school, when a lot of people I admire were in art school in the 1960s and 1970s, there was no money. If you go into it knowing that you will probably not be rewarded lavishly, but you can in fact continue to work, you're o a much better footing than if you go into it trying to make a huge impact when you're 23 or 24, and then maintain that for the next 60 years. You know Jonh Baldessari is someone whom everyone admires, but people by and large forget that he destroyed all of his "successful work" and started all over again. I'm interested in people who make good art, whenever they make it, and I think a lot of the best artists today are late bloomers. I'm a big fan of both Raoul De Keyser and Tom Nozkowski, who I put in the Venice Biennale (2007). Tom is 65 and Raoul is 78 and neither one of them really hit it until they were way past the age when most people think it would be the end of your career.
TAN: Maybe there's less of a focus on the cult of youth.
Storr: There isn't less of a focus yet, but it's going to dawn on people that it's not working. It's always nice to be a coming attraction, but it's murder to be a has-been. If it hasn't happened for you yet, you can at least console yourself with the idea that it might. It's a fashionable world and even good artists go out of fashion. If you've never really thought about what you're going to do when you go out of fashion because you've never been out of fashion, it's much harder to take than if you've gradually come into your own, gotten through difficult times and know that you can survive.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Amy Sillman, Untitled, 2007
"Sometimes when I am getting into a painting I try to paint around what I think is the great part. Then the great part becomes this ugly little tumor that has nothing to do with anything else in the painting, and finally I just have to paint it out. In writing it's called "killing your darlings." Sometimes there are beautiful places that you have to keep, but there are definitely always struggles between one state and another. The paintings are the results of those struggles. Other times I try to go back to the original impulse for a painting after it has become unrecognizable. I'll take out the original drawing that I was looking at the use it like a compass because the first thing I was doing might have been the best thing." Amy Sillman
"Painting seems like an impossibility, with only a sign now and then of its own light. Which must be because of the narrow passage from diagramming to that other state - a corporeality. In this sense, to paint is a possessing rather than a picturing." "To will a new form is inacceptable, because will builds distortions. Desire, too, is incomplete and arbitrary. These strategies, however intimate they become, must especially be removed to clear the way for something else - a situation somewhat unclear, but which in retrospect becomes a very precise act ..." Philip Guston
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)