a resolution of truth

Attempting to begin to synthesize one’s own experiences into a memoir; to try an organize the important from the unimportant, to scale down stories, and to view one’s own unvarnished reflection is terrifying.

Not only do you have the opportunity to completely expose yourself as an utterly mundane member of the human race, but to know, really know that nothing you are doing or experiencing is really that different from those who have come before you.

It is frightening and freeing at the same time.

I write this post to explain what some of you may have already discovered, that I have begun a new blog entitled the seduction of suicide. Right now, I am the only person who can read it. The reason for starting it was/is simple, I am attempting to force myself to write in a more autobiographical vein.

The results so far: incomprehensible gibberish that I can barely read back to myself without cringing. As it turns out, I am a petty, vainglorious, creature who delights in using words like quantify and qualify in an attempt to bury the details of my own emotional life.

Anyway, back to the blog. Why such a semi-public forum, why not a diary or just a Word document on my desktop? Simple: those things are too easy to hide. This way, everytime I log on to palaver about artisntrocketscience nonsense, I am reminded of the other task I set for myself.

So, wish me luck, and don’t forget to prepare for Fay...even if that just means a gallon of bourbon and a tub full of cleanish water...

A Street Kid Who’s Read Ruskin

Larry Salander was a man with a vision of righteousness: he believed that it was a travesty that Old Master paintings were going begging at auction, while contemporary pieces by artists like Koons were selling for millions. He saw it as a symptom of a larger cultural malaise; as an established NYC dealer, he set out to correct what he perceived as this terrible wrong.

Now he's tens of millions in debt, and being sued by those he once called friends. But for those of us not feeding at the gilded troughs of the uppermost echelons in the art world, his fall from grace is an instructive look at how hype and glamour can inflate an unregulated market; how an empires is built and then crumbles.

For the story, cut and paste the links:

New York Magazine: http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=An+Old+Master+in+Ruins&expire=&urlID=27353033&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Ffeatures%2F45324%2F&partnerID=73272

Portfolio: http://www.portfolio.com/culture-lifestyle/culture-inc/arts/2008/03/17/Art-Dealer-Larry-Salander-Trials

* image= Paul on the road to Damascus, Carravaggio

Heartbreak

“Picasso stirred. Picasso screamed. A genius came to life. His first breath must have entered on a rush of smoke, searing the throat, scorching to the lungs, and laced with the sitmulants of nicotine. It is not unfair to say that the harsh spirit of tobacco is seldom absent from his work." --from "Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man."

I still remember the first Mailer book I ever read, "Tough Guys Don't Dance," a brilliant potboiler that alternately titillated, shocked and disgusted. This was before I even realized “who” he was, and where in the Pantheon of writers he stood. And long before I became exhausted with the relentless macho posing of the writers of his generation (I still can’t stomach Henry Miller).

But the prose in “Tough Guys” made me seek out his other writings, and though I have yet to make it through his entire oeuvre, his passing still marks the end of an era. The NY Times says it better than I can:

“Mailer built and nurtured an image over the years as pugnacious, streetwise and high-living. He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party.

He had nine children, made a quixotic bid to become mayor of New York, produced five forgettable films, dabbled in journalism, flew gliders, challenged professional boxers, was banned from a Manhattan YWHA for reciting obscene poetry, feuded publicly with writer Gore Vidal and crusaded against women's lib.”

But as Newsweek reviewer Raymond Sokolov said in 1968, “in the end it is the writing that will count.”

So let’s end this rumination with an answered question, instead of posing a new one:

Q. Who stole the Mona Lisa?

A. In 1911, a mad Italian housepainter—Vincenzo Peruggia—stole the painting to return it to his native country. It was found in 1913 in Florence.

“Seriousness” as a form of infectious stupidity

From the recent (amazing) article/interview with Dave Hickey by Sheila Heti over at the Believer (many thanks to Mark Creegan for bringing it to light).

"And you must want to win. I don’t want to be rich, but I want to win. I want my enemies to fall in shambles. I do not want to be fair. I want the art I hate to go away. If you want your art to stay around, and I hate it, get your own fucking critic! So I am not in favor of art—I’m in favor of the art I like."

Hell to the yes.

He also gave us that lovely line (co-opted from Alec Waugh): “Seriousness” as a form of infectious stupidity.

www.believermag.com/issues/200711/?read=interview_hickey