Re: [-empyre-] nice and not nice...

[Barrie <barriec@optusnet.com.au>]

Cheers, Barrie, on 18.1.05 07:44 PM, The Paul Annears at
the.paul.annears@gmail.com wrote:

> Dear Soft-Skinned Peeples
> 
> There are (at least) two groups that seems very very under-represented here on
> this discussion.
> 
> One group is the indigenous Aoteraoan, however that might be defined.
> This is only an issue because we are supposedly discussing the new
> media from the perspective of the Aotearoan, indigenous and otherwise
> if it is possible (or rather: sensible) to make that distinction.
> 
> The other group that seems to me to be under-represented is the
> practising artist (full stop).  The practising artist (full stop)
> being a person (or other sentient entity) who doesn't have a job at
> what is known in NZ as a tertiary institution.  The distinction that I
> am making is not that teaching is evil, but rather that the artist,
> who doesn't have a job 'teaching' students (most of whom have
> absolutely no talent and in any other non-middle-class reality would
> have to get a job), this artist, I suggest, has a rather different
> perspective and is operating in a rather different realm.
> 
> For myself I can say that I have had a number of grants and have
> taught in a few workshops but for many years now I have not had a
> comfortable middle-class existence and looking at the results of
> middle-class art: a huge explosion of galleries and of middle-class
> buyers and a extraordinary implosion of completely puke-worthy 'art'
> leads in the same direction
> as the rest of the bloated society is heading, to wit, down the
> non-composting toilet.

I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar Wilde

> The practising artist's role, be he Aotearoan or not, be she online or
> offline, is to push the limits, to go where no sentient being has gone
> before.  OR, perhaps, is the practising artist's role to work the
> room, shoot the breeze with the people who will further their careers
> and generally be, at least on the surface, fawning and disgustingly
> appreciative of the favours that might be dripped upon them?
> 
> In 1982 I had an exhibition of my paintings.  One of them was a
> colourful matrix, a labyrinth of uncertain meaning to the uninitiated.
> The gallery dealer took me too firmly by the arm with his alcoholic
> hand, whispered hoarsely at me that the people he was about to
> introduce me to were going to buy the painting and that they would
> like to meet the artist before they did.
> 
> These people who reminded me very much of my Uncle Brian and Aunty Jean
> (who at that very moment were watching The Sound of Music for the 29th
> time with their three plump children) wanted to ask me a question.
> Fire away, I said, with a euphoric sinking feeling.
> 
> They liked the colours the size of it and it would go very nicely on a
> certain wall in some room or the other, but what was the painting
> about?
> 
> I explained that it interested me that young people liked to dress
> up...and go out and get covered in blood...and be mutilated...and die
> horrible deaths...the red they admired was blood.
> 
> It is not the job of the artist to be provocative, mildly or
> otherwise.  But it is the job of the artist to question everything, to
> stand outside everything, and how can someone who is questioning
> everything survive in a
> middle-class environment?

Money can't buy friends, but it can get you a better class of enemy.
Spike Milligan

> I suppose the answer might be: by being wonderfully brilliant.
> 
> Voyeuristically yours,
> 
> The Paul Annears

I had an uncle, dead now, from my first marriage. He was an actor, his stage
name was the same as mine - Barrie Collins, which never ceased to amuse him,
he performed on stage during the depression here in Australia.
He and his mates in the local barber shop were always short of cash, one day
they were discussing art and discovered that each of them could paint one
thing really well. My uncle could do a nice sunset, another bloke said he
could paint reasonable trees, another quite good lakes and the last could do
a good flamingo.
So they set up a business painting landscapes with flamingos which they sold
in the barber shop, made enough to pay for the beer, what more do you want.

Barrie

(its a true bloody story, I only wish I had one of the paintings)