There are lots and lots of ideas a person might have about the artist’s lifestyle— poverty, glamour, eccentricity, madness— but there are some aspects of being an artist that I would never have anticipated.
Namely, the constant jokes about death and murder. Not exactly advertised in those art school brochures, is it?
I’ve recognized that when I make a sale to a person that I know well enough to joke with, or when I tell a friend about a particularly important recent sale, it is typically met with something like:
“I guess now if you die it will be worth a lot more.”
Or:
“So, now, if you were to say…. meet with some tragic death… the price would be even more than that…”
You get the picture.
In choosing to pursue the often intimidating profession of “artist,” I may have thought “will I make it?” or “will I starve?”… I’d foreseen many challenges, but continual “joking” about my demise was not one of them.
It would be akin to buying a car from the auto dealer and saying “thank, hope you croak now.” Or, at the grocery store “thanks for the plastic, not paper, and watch out for that slippery tile, wouldn’t want to break your neck now, would you” (add a wink).
Ok, the first example isn’t so hot given how people generally feel about car salesmen (pardon me, salespeople)… but, again, you get the picture.
For a related/unrelated segue, I am including the above photo of a picture that I keep in my studio— a computer printout of Gustave Courbet’s “A Burial at Ornans” from 1851.
I keep it close as I have spent a lot of time thinking on it and wanting to do something with it for the basis of an art piece (see images above of my sketch book/journal). For quite some time I was planning a piece with the working title “The Death of the Horizon,” as this painting seems to depict a modern (literally – Modernist) masterpiece that is actually announcing the death of the types of painting that came before it.
Courbet’s flatness predicts Postmodernism and the treatment of canvas and paint on the level of surface, surface, surface. I’ve often wondered about the idea of Courbet burying the past with this pinnacle of modern painting announcing “no more horizon”— indeed, the paintings of Monet push this idea of flatness (paint blobs on canvas) and then finally, once we get to the lily pond, are literally looking down into the water without a horizon line in sight. Push past this into Abstract Expressionism and the New York School and Courbet’s painting becomes an announcement, a prophecy, a rapper’s dis’ to the Old School as the leader of the new.
I admit the leap between Courbet to Monet to Pollock/Abstract Expressionism is a bit oversimplified, but I love this idea of Courbet announcing the death of the old and that he will forever change painting. And he did.
Also, this idea of horizon, and its impact on art, is especially compelling to me— when working in non-representational styles there is such a hazard, when there is no horizon, of letting your work devolve into a simple necktie pattern rather than a work of art.
Kurt Vonnegut mentions this notion of horizon and contemporary painting in his essay collection, “Fates Worse than Death,” regarding Jackson Pollock’s “dribble” paintings.
On page 45, he writes:
“My main reason for not liking the dribbles much, except possibly as textile designs, is primitive: They show me no horizon. I can easily do without information in a painting except for one fact, which my nervous system, and maybe the nervous system of all earthbound animals, insists on knowing: where the horizon is. I think of newborn deer, who have thought to struggle to their feet and maybe start running for their lives almost immediately. The first piece of important information their eyes transmit to their brains, surely, is the location of the horizon. So it is, too, with human beings awakening from sleep or a coma: the first thing they have to know before reasoning is where the horizon is.
As responsible shippers say on packages containing objects which are easily distressed, like the human nervous system:
THIS SIDE UP”
So, this idea of the pivotal moment in painting when artists abandoned the horizon is integral in thinking about the shift between Modern and Postmodern.
And the Courbet is my favorite painting of a funeral (which in itself would make a good title for a book of poems: MY FAVORITE PAINTING OF A FUNERAL, and other poems)… so I think of it whenever someone says:
“So, if you get killed by a rabid fan now… then….”
Ahh, the perils of Art.
Namely, the constant jokes about death and murder. Not exactly advertised in those art school brochures, is it?
I’ve recognized that when I make a sale to a person that I know well enough to joke with, or when I tell a friend about a particularly important recent sale, it is typically met with something like:
“I guess now if you die it will be worth a lot more.”
Or:
“So, now, if you were to say…. meet with some tragic death… the price would be even more than that…”
You get the picture.
In choosing to pursue the often intimidating profession of “artist,” I may have thought “will I make it?” or “will I starve?”… I’d foreseen many challenges, but continual “joking” about my demise was not one of them.
It would be akin to buying a car from the auto dealer and saying “thank, hope you croak now.” Or, at the grocery store “thanks for the plastic, not paper, and watch out for that slippery tile, wouldn’t want to break your neck now, would you” (add a wink).
Ok, the first example isn’t so hot given how people generally feel about car salesmen (pardon me, salespeople)… but, again, you get the picture.
For a related/unrelated segue, I am including the above photo of a picture that I keep in my studio— a computer printout of Gustave Courbet’s “A Burial at Ornans” from 1851.
I keep it close as I have spent a lot of time thinking on it and wanting to do something with it for the basis of an art piece (see images above of my sketch book/journal). For quite some time I was planning a piece with the working title “The Death of the Horizon,” as this painting seems to depict a modern (literally – Modernist) masterpiece that is actually announcing the death of the types of painting that came before it.
Courbet’s flatness predicts Postmodernism and the treatment of canvas and paint on the level of surface, surface, surface. I’ve often wondered about the idea of Courbet burying the past with this pinnacle of modern painting announcing “no more horizon”— indeed, the paintings of Monet push this idea of flatness (paint blobs on canvas) and then finally, once we get to the lily pond, are literally looking down into the water without a horizon line in sight. Push past this into Abstract Expressionism and the New York School and Courbet’s painting becomes an announcement, a prophecy, a rapper’s dis’ to the Old School as the leader of the new.
I admit the leap between Courbet to Monet to Pollock/Abstract Expressionism is a bit oversimplified, but I love this idea of Courbet announcing the death of the old and that he will forever change painting. And he did.
Also, this idea of horizon, and its impact on art, is especially compelling to me— when working in non-representational styles there is such a hazard, when there is no horizon, of letting your work devolve into a simple necktie pattern rather than a work of art.
Kurt Vonnegut mentions this notion of horizon and contemporary painting in his essay collection, “Fates Worse than Death,” regarding Jackson Pollock’s “dribble” paintings.
On page 45, he writes:
“My main reason for not liking the dribbles much, except possibly as textile designs, is primitive: They show me no horizon. I can easily do without information in a painting except for one fact, which my nervous system, and maybe the nervous system of all earthbound animals, insists on knowing: where the horizon is. I think of newborn deer, who have thought to struggle to their feet and maybe start running for their lives almost immediately. The first piece of important information their eyes transmit to their brains, surely, is the location of the horizon. So it is, too, with human beings awakening from sleep or a coma: the first thing they have to know before reasoning is where the horizon is.
As responsible shippers say on packages containing objects which are easily distressed, like the human nervous system:
THIS SIDE UP”
So, this idea of the pivotal moment in painting when artists abandoned the horizon is integral in thinking about the shift between Modern and Postmodern.
And the Courbet is my favorite painting of a funeral (which in itself would make a good title for a book of poems: MY FAVORITE PAINTING OF A FUNERAL, and other poems)… so I think of it whenever someone says:
“So, if you get killed by a rabid fan now… then….”
Ahh, the perils of Art.
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