I am about finished with it due to sitting around for long stretches in airports. I haven't reached the reunion with Elaine and the Alzheimer's stuff but he has just moved into the studio that he built on Long Island - finally.
This book has taken a less interesting corner - pretty much directly after excavation's premier. It is making me mad and irritable now. What is the deal with these Ab-ex guys? Please. Please!!! The beginning of the book felt so full of possiblities, history in the making, genuineness, talk of painting and now the book has become a detailed account of girlfriends, mistresses, travel, bar scenes and benders.
I am starting to dislike de Kooning. It's similar to the feeling i had reading the Guston bio written by his daughter. A young white man risks it all, starts with nothing, and devotes his ENTIRE life to art and art-making barring none. He is not responsible for anything because hey, he's a genius, he's committed. Too bad that I have a daughter - I can't deal because my emotions and feelings are so special and intense. I am so special. I am so poor i eat sand and drink lighter fluid because I will not demean my art and get a job and live like a normal person (my exaggeration). No way. I will make little compromise. These guys act like spoiled shitheads and they are excused in the name of being an artist. Does anyone else get really annoyed reading this stuff? It's one 30 year old woman after another. I just fall in love with them and move in with them and then they take care of me and then I move onto the next one. And oh, what a struggle with alchohol he had because his mother was such a tyrant. give me a break. is it just me? In general I feel that the biographers try and paint a fair-ish picture of Bill - not glossing over the crap parts - only in certain spots is an excuse sort of written into the way that they present the story. I mean, my god. This guy was "drying out" in the hospital every other month. Get it together man! you have a daughter. You are 50 years old, 60 years old.
Okay, okay. I still love his work and part of me does relish the romantic picture of this man. he has his flaws and struggles. the book is interesting. but it makes it seem impossible to be a normal artist - one that is responsible for bills and cleans up and is orderly - is not a total weirdo. god forbid that an artist is married with a family. I am sure the whole thing is part of the times - a response the strict american ideas about how a respectable person leads their life and has a family and job, etc. I don't know. It's just that reading this depresses me. There are other models of being an artist out there, right? Or do you have to be so wholly devoted, so oblivious, so self-involved to truly be a great one?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
21 comments:
3 words, fb:
WHITE MALE GUILT.
i don't get it. explain.
feeling guilty about something but then drowning in alchohol instead?
i am spelling alcohol wrong. how the hell is it spelled. brain prolapse.
He's doing anything he wants because he can (as a free white male could do in the 50's, 60's and hey, even now, slightly checked by political correctness.) And he's created a safehouse (the art world) in which to pee his pants. But he still hears his ex-girlfriends and and daughters and feels guilty about their lack of power. And it's not like he could TALK about his feelings or the feelings of others (as was the style of the time...)
So he turns to the Great Obliterator of Pain, alchohol. And it works (it even turns pity onto him, leveling out the playing field in his mind.) Also, when your ignoring a girlfriend or a daughter, it gives you a lot of free time to think crazy thoughts and have a few extra beers, get in fights, talk about jazz (as was the style of the time...)
I don't want to sound like i'm sticking up for the guy...
I like about 5 of his paintings total. And there's nothing wrong with being a white male (at least i h-h-h-hope... gulp!) But I don't know, wouldn't it be nice to read say, the Agnes Martin bio instead? Something that had very little to do with 'lovers' and 'benders'? I mean, everyone knows Dutch people like beer, and how sexy can art groupies be? All the good groupies back then were all up in Buddy Holly's business.
I digress...
okay...update: i am getting further now - into the late paintings and actually feeling sorry for Bill at this point.
ugh. Did you see the PBS special last night? All about the almighty man.
A few girls peppered in to appease the feminists.
I guess the thinking is that women can't make the grand gesture.
Fuck them.
cat woman,
no. i couldn't watch it. which women were included? cindy sherman and who else?
Penis.
georgia o'keefe and lee krasner.
I sometimes check out how many women are represented on gallery websites. I'm thinking that buyers don't feel confident spending money on women's work.
I think it is getting better, certainly, but women are still working at a disadvantage.
Ugh. It's too early to get depressed.
I think I should wait til the afternoon before I start the vengence. This cat woman is a tiger.
i like it cat woman. thirst for the blood. what you are saying is 100% true.
I am thinking that I need to go shopping at lunch today. cheap crap something buying. american way. slaves in china. i am pure evil sucker fat american ass. yup. I am giving in today, but maybe there will be nothing to buy.
Maybe you should pick up a knife just in case somebody crosses you wrong. that always makes me feel better.
really, i should sculpt a shank in my free time here at my cube. out of the husk of a beige pen. i can carry it taped to my forearm. i have plenty of time to work on this god knows.
pd, i have a baseball cap at home embroidered with the worlds "golden girl." perhaps you know someone who would wear it? it's yours.
unfortunately Bea did not sign it but seriously i will give it to you to give to her.
oh darn, what pbs special? i was watching wife swap.
Looking for information and found it at this great site... » »
Excellent, love it! »
Best regards from NY! scholarships Viagra rezeptfrei kaufen vermont health insurance Roulette recorder play win smart E-mail and print digital photos Saskatoon business insurance Tv stations in alburque nm Livermore bulldogs youth baseball team financial advisor Pectus carinatum asthma Endowment mortgages problem Discount leather sofas south transsexual Phendimetrazine shipped c.o.d porsche accessories
Post a Comment