MarkFord.net
The open-for-inspection half-way home for my writing…
I don’t know if this letter was written in earnest. But I do know, from Letters of Note, that it is real.
Margaret Stuart-Wortley
1879
Margaret,
If you find yourself unwilling to accept me, will you please pass this letter on to your sister Caroline?
Cordially,
Ralph King-Milbanke, 2nd Earl of Lovelace
Stopping the “Stop Oil” Numbskulls
To publicize their idiotic cause of “no more oil production,” protestors have been targeting art treasures in museums in Europe almost non-stop since the beginning of this year.
At the start, their strategy was to glue themselves to the frames of well-known paintings. This got them the press coverage they were looking for. But after doing it a half-dozen times, they found that they were losing their audience. So, they tried to keep up the momentum by gluing themselves to ever more famous works. And when that didn’t work, they did the only other thing they could think of. They began assaulting the art. First, by throwing non-staining liquids at the masterpieces. Then by upping it to maple syrup, which caused temporary damage. And then by upping it again to diesel fuel and oil, which did serious damage.
The museums did their best to respond to the attacks with a degree of Woke sympathy. (Museums, if you don’t know, are among the most Woke institutions in the world.) They expressed dismay at the acts, but support for the cause.
The last such attack happened in early November when three young people from Finland, Denmark, and Germany attempted to glue themselves to Edvard Munch’s The Scream at the National Museum of Norway. “The glue didn’t stick this time. But we won’t give in until the government meets our demands,” the activist group posted on Twitter.
The Norwegian museum directors couldn’t let this one go with a little slap on the wrists. It was, after all, The Scream! The protestors were arrested.
Click here.
From a letter Charles Bukowski, at age 64, sent to his publisher in 1971:
“I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I’m gone) how I’ve come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.
“To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.” (Source: Letters of Note)
Is This a Party You’d Want to Go To?
Click here for a first-person account of the recent LACMA fundraiser, which raised $5 million. It will tell you everything that is wrong about the art market today.
What Should We Say About Alex Katz?
The Guggenheim is putting on a major retrospective of Alex Katz’s paintings. I came across a review of it by Alex Greenberger in Art News that was very negative. He calls the work “vapid.” (You can read the review here.)
I asked Bob S, a book club friend who has a great collection of art, including one fantastic Katz, what he thought of the review.
He said: “We’re going to NY next week and will see it. The NYT review from a few weeks ago was much more favorable. Any artist has some great works, some not so great works, and some failed experiments. This reviewer falls into the old art critic trap that says that if a painting is beautiful, it must be crap. I happen to think he’s a wonderful artist that created his own style, interesting and fun. I’ll comment on the exhibit after I see it.”
I agree with Bob. Katz developed a style that was and is unique. And also, obviously, enticing. That’s hard to do. His work is sometimes explained as social commentary. That’s a fair perspective. But it is not simplistic commentary, like most art that attempts to be social or political. There is a cleverness to Katz in the way he chooses scenes that resonate with the flatness of his painting and make it difficult to know to what degree he’s being ironic.
Big Artwork, Bigger ROI!
The last time it was sold at auction, in 1987, it sold for $660,000. Andy Warhol’s 1963 White Disaster (White Car Crash 19 Times), from his “Death and Disasters” series, will be auctioned at Sotheby’s on Nov. 16. It’s estimated to go for more than $80 million.
Click here.
Here’s another example of why visual artists should not be allowed to use words.
This is an installation on the façade of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. It is by someone named Katharina Cibulka. According to the dumbos that write for ArtNews, it is part of an ongoing project titled “SOLANGE” (German for “as long as”) in which Cibulka has “transformed public construction sites into textual displays that draw on feminism.”
What is dumber? Cibulka’s statement or the explanation?
Something I’ve learned about writing: You can’t assume that friends and family members will want to read your books and essays. Some won’t read them at all. (K doesn’t read my non-fiction writing because she says she gets “enough of me” in person.) And then there are the friends and family members that read you but find fault with your writing. An example: This 1926 letter from Grace Hall Hemingway to her son after reading his latest, The Sun Also Rises…
Ernest,
It is a doubtful honor to produce one of the filthiest books of the year.
What is the matter? Have you ceased to be interested in loyalty, nobility, honor, and fineness in life? Surely you have other words in your vocabulary besides “damn” and “bitch” – Every page fills me with a sick loathing – if I should pick up a book by any other writer with such words in it, I should read no more – but pitch it in the fire.
Bach, Rachel Carlson, and MC Escher
I’m a fan of MC Escher’s art. And Rachel Carlson’s writing. And Johann Sebastian Bach’s music. (Who isn’t?) But did you know that they are connected? Escher and Carlson were inspired by Bach. And each was also inspired by the other. In fact, thanks to The Marginalian, I discovered that Escher wrote about his admiration for Carlson several times in letters to his friends and to his son. For example:
She describes that liquid element, with an overview of all its associated facets and problems, in such an enthralling manner, with precision and poetry, that it is driving me half insane. This is exactly the kind of reading material I, with my advancing years, need most: a stimulus from our mother earth for my spatial imagination…. It is kindling in me intense inspiration to create a new print.
If you’d like to read more about this connection, Maria Popova writes about it in this (typically overly florid) essay. Click here.
