Blog Archives
Pearls from artists* # 577
In the Studio
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
What is the popular conception of the artist? Gather a thousand descriptions and the resulting composite is the portrait of a moron: he is held to be childish, irresponsible, and ignorant or stupid in everyday affairs.
The picture does not necessarily involve censure or unkindness. These definitions are attributed to the artist’s preoccupation with his particular kind of fantasy and to the unworldly nature of the fantastic itself. The bantering tolerance granted to the absentminded professor is extended to the artist. Biographers contrast the artless news of his judgments with the high attainment of his art, and while his naïveté or rascality are gossiped about, they are viewed as signs of Simplicity and Inspiration, which are the Handmaidens of Art. And if the artist is inarticulate and lacking in the usual repositories of fact and information, how fortunate, it is said, that nature has contrived to divert him from all worldly distractions so he may be single-minded in regards to his special office.
Mark Rothko in The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art, edited and with an introduction by Christopher Rothko
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 566
With “Sacrificial” (left), 70” x 50” framed and “Disruptor,” 35” x 28.5” framed; both are soft pastel on sandpaper
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
Money, fame. It was funny, it was confusing. It was the end. The purity was gone. “I vividly experienced the change of climate with the financial boom in the art world,” Mercedes [Matter] said. “The change from taking poverty and obscurity for granted to competing for a place in the spotlight. At the Cedar [Tavern] one began hearing many talking about galleries over their bourbons instead… [of] about art as before over their beers.” Artists had become entertainers, selling themselves and their gifts for a piece of paper, the almighty dollar, emblazoned with a new motto, “In God We Trust.” Paul Brach said 1957 was the last year that artists made other artists’ reputations. From then on, they were made by a machine called “the art establishment.” “Career, the nemesis of our past, had crept up on all of us,” Larry [Rivers] said. It was like a virus, something all of them had but none of them wanted. At least in the abstract.
Mary Gabriel in Ninth Street Women
Comments are welcome!
barbararachkoscoloreddust.com 