Living the literary life?

[Jozanny]

I am curious as to what "living the literary life" means to members who might care, or do care, about living it themselves. I have some thoughts on this I will return to later, but I am curious as to what the regulars, or even the not so regulars, think about this aspect towards creativity and end product.

Anyone?

[JBI]

Literary life as in the life of a writer, or the life of a critic?

[Kafka's Crow]

Literary life as in the life of a writer, or the life of a critic?

... or the life of a life-long student or lover of literature?

[JBI]

... or the life of a life-long student or lover of literature?

(a critic)

[stlukesguild]

Like JBI, I have some questions as to what you are speaking of. I am a bibliophile... a passionate lover of literature... but don't consider myself a writer at all. Taking your question on creativity over into my own field of the visual arts I will say that a great majority of the notions of what the artist's life is like is like is no more than stereotypes. Artists come from all walks of life. They earn their keep in all manners. They can be found all across the political spectrum. The only common thread that runs throughout us all is a passionate need to make art. Pablo Picasso is the "author" of a great many of the most insightful aphorisms related to the artist's life:

We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.

Good artists copy. Great artists steal.

Every child is an artist. It's a challenge to remain an artist when you grow up.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

The quality of a painter depends on the amount of the past he carries with him.

A painter is a man who paints what he sells. An artist, however, is a man who sells what he paints.

When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.

The first of these is the most insightful... or has certainly been so for me. It challenges the notion of the artist as some moonstruck visionary who only creates when touched by the muses, and recognizes that artists may indeed be touched by inspiration... but the largest part of the labor of creation is undertaken day after day... like any other job.

[Jozanny]

Literary life as in the life of a writer, or the life of a critic?

Why do you assume we need a qualification between the two? A critic, especially in the modern era, is rarely separate from the profession of creative writing itself, though in luke's case that might be different, as professional art critics develop chest pains the minute MOMA gets gas.;) (and luke will jump on me about that, I'm sure)...

As mentioned, I do have some thinking aloud on this, but I have to go google televisions and reluctantly price one. I hate tv, but love movies, and even without the digital switch, can't do Netflix and get my DVD player hooked up without a new television, alas, but I will leave with this thought, for now.

I always had romantic notions about it from when I was JBI's age (assuming he is about my age now as when I was an undergrad in 82). I thought the very power of my work would land me the right perfectly urbane husband with similar humanistic leanings, and that maybe I could even try to raise a baby thereby, despite my limbs, and that travel would come my way and be manageable simply because it was my right, and that my age now would have enveloped me in the perfect aesthete's bauble.

Compared to what my life really is (public housing, disability benefits, and containment challenges minus Depends because they are too difficult for me to handle...) was it worth all this cost, and so much of my idealism scattered over many lengths of football fields?

Mmm. I dunno. I will run on more later.

[JBI]

You need to read Leopardi, I think he is right up your alley:

From A Silvia

My sweet hopes died also
little by little: to me too
Fate has denied those years.
Oh, how you’ve passed me by,
dear friend of my new life,
my saddened hope!
Is this the world, the dreams,
the loves, events, delights,
we spoke about so much together?
Is this our human life?
At the advance of Truth
you fell, unhappy one,
and from the distance,
with your hand you pointed
towards death’s coldness and the silent grave.

Note, in terms of translation, maybe 3/10, but I used it because it is in the public domain, and I don't have an English copy of the Canti on me.

I had prospects of being some sort of successful writer when I was about 11-17 or so. I guess I cowered, and decided it would be safer to be a critic - less risk required. I think I made the correct choice, as I am a poet kind of guy, and even if I was successful, I would still be starving.

[LitNetIsGreat]

A painter is a man who paints what he sells. An artist, however, is a man who sells what he paints.

Oh, I like that one.


I have an extremely clichéd imaginary image of the ‘literary life’. You know it is all about loafing around on over-sized divans, wearing comfy loose-fitting clothes and sipping absinthe. I'm sure it will be like this in after a few more years of study anyway, don't shatter my illusions please.

[Etienne]

A painter is a man who paints what he sells. An artist, however, is a man who sells what he paints.

Oh, I like that one.


I have an extremely clichéd imaginary image of the ‘literary life’. You know it is all about loafing around on over-sized divans, wearing comfy loose-fitting clothes and sipping absinthe. I'm sure it will be like this in after a few more years of study anyway, don't shatter my illusions please.

Hey, I'm still studying and I'm already doing that! :thumbs_up My divan is not over-sized though...

[LitNetIsGreat]

Hey, I'm still studying and I'm already doing that! :thumbs_up My divan is not over-sized though...

Hey, yes you have made my day! :)

[stlukesguild]

Must say I have a few lost illusions of the artist's life. I still haven't managed that garret in Paris... right on the Seine. I've yet to get around to purchasing a beret. My wife has this thing about nude models strolling around the live-in-studio... in fact, after a year in New York living in my studio I found that it wasn't for me either. I do have lots of black clothing, however... the artist's obligatory "uniform" you know.

[Jozanny]

I have an extremely clichéd imaginary image of the ‘literary life’. You know it is all about loafing around on over-sized divans, wearing comfy loose-fitting clothes and sipping absinthe.

I cannot post it as funny as I heard it, but the word is that George Plimpton was drunk on absinthe when he and his fellows started The Paris Review. Remarkable that it still remains one of the premier literary journals in this still fresh century.

Has anyone here ever had absinthe? Spot on Neely!:thumbs_up

[andave_ya]

I am curious as to what "living the literary life" means to members who might care, or do care, about living it themselves. I have some thoughts on this I will return to later, but I am curious as to what the regulars, or even the not so regulars, think about this aspect towards creativity and end product.



That's an interesting topic; I too am interested in the opinion of those here.

As to living the literary life, I believe that is split into two, perhaps three: writing, reading, and maybe critiquing and editing.

I suppose I am a writer, but I'm not really comfortable saying that because I'm only seventeen, and I too have ideas of rather high standards (Tolkien, Dostoevsky, Sayers, etc.) to match up to. So perhaps I'm a writer apprentice, because I certainly do study their styles :).

I definitely am a reader, though in interests of both age and modesty :p I don't think I fully understand what that means...YET. I read not necessarily a lot but I generally pick one book at a time and read it through (unless it is interminably long like Les Miserables and goes into a so-far seemingly pointless digression onto the effects and repercussions and even meaning of Waterloo) and go through to the next one.

As to critiquing and editing, it seems like I do a lot of that on my own work :lol:. I've helped out a few friends but I would like to continue "practicing" in this aspect, especially because I will have to do a lot of that as a professor, which is my career goal :). It will be interesting to learn how to portray classical ideals and principles in a modern-ish light.

[Jozanny]

I suppose I am a writer, but I'm not really comfortable saying that because I'm only seventeen, and I too have ideas of rather high standards (Tolkien, Dostoevsky, Sayers, etc.) to match up to. So perhaps I'm a writer apprentice, because I certainly do study their styles :).

andave: I get this, when you say *only* seventeen. I did not really prove anything to myself until by chance I hit the minor leagues as a disability reporter. I had been publishing for years, mind, before that, in the independent and little presses, but after a while, literary journal affirmation wears a bit thin, even when I appeared with Jayne Anne Phillips in Oxford Magazine. (If you Google Machine Dreams you can find something out about Phillips, but my admiration for her nearly has a homo-erotic enthusiasm to it... did I just say that?:blush::D) Alas, I will always have deviance for solace, but my point was, and is, that even though I have slowed down, to my detriment, since 06, I can and do believe in myself because I broke ground by getting my byline in The Philadelphia Inquirer.

That is the big leagues, and I can and will do it again, barring a medical issue doesn't bring me down first.

Young writers like yourself seem to go one of two ways. They make a big splash and get stuck there, or they toil on like a good soldier until they find the appropriate multi-cultural niche. It takes discipline, a willingness to get hurt (some people will take your efforts and shred them, trust me), and the biggest thing, is persistence. You have to keep getting rejected.

I veered off a little here, but ought to content myself in the role of Mother Goose who has a few nuggets of wisdom to leave in the basket. Last one, for now: live. Don't beat yourself for taking chances which may end up being mistakes. I do that too often to myself.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I cannot post it as funny as I heard it, but the word is that George Plimpton was drunk on absinthe when he and his fellows started The Paris Review. Remarkable that it still remains one of the premier literary journals in this still fresh century.

Has anyone here ever had absinthe? Spot on Neely!:thumbs_up

I have had it once when someone brought it from a trip abroad (very good). Can't get hold of it here that much at all, barring dodgy online sites and the like, it seems that I have to make do with beer, at least for a while.

[Bitterfly]

Must say I have a few lost illusions of the artist's life. I still haven't managed that garret in Paris... right on the Seine.

Ha, would cost a bomb now. I don't think artists nowadays can afford to live where 19th-early 20th century artists used to live in Paris (St Germain, Latin Quarter, Ile de la Cité or Montmartre)...

For me living an artist's life means not being overly preoccupied with material aspects of life but giving importance to aesthetics: trying to live as beautifully, or at least as gracefully, as possible. Not being "petit-bourgeois" in mind.

[Kafka's Crow]

Ha, would cost a bomb now. I don't think artists nowadays can afford to live where 19th-early 20th century artists used to live in Paris (St Germain, Latin Quarter, Ile de la Cité or Montmartre)...

For me living an artist's life means not being overly preoccupied with material aspects of life but giving importance to aesthetics: trying to live as beautifully, or at least as gracefully, as possible. Not being "petit-bourgeois" in mind.

That's good, Bitter, I like that. Beauty is so, how should I put it, so beautiful. I love beauty. I love beautiful people, children, music, paintings, Raphael and Ginevra Benci. Still there is a devil in me howling for absinthe, blood, outrageous acts like walking a lobster down our high-street, useless, fruitless friendship with servile, self-seeking, ignorant snobs, the insolence of office, the pangs of desprized love, all things self-destructive, to be like

Ainsi qu'un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange
Le sein martyrisé d'une antique catin...

Then there is the dandy. Oscar Wilde, Stephen Frye. Stephen Frye as Oscar Wilde:


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518WW0RQJAL._SS500_.jpg

Wow! Debauchery and sphistication incarnate. Rimbaud and Lord Alfred Tennyson rolled into one! There are so many different ways of 'living the literary life'. I chose to choose nothing! I just want to be. I just want to love beauty and occasionally let this love overflow into a tiny poem. I want time, to read and read and read. I want to read everything. I have a book in my head, a novel. I used to write occasionally but feel a lot distracted during this last year or so. (been falling in and out of love with the same person which has left two thoroughly confused souls on a planet where most of the inabitants seem to know where they are going!) More often than not, I hear a scream inside my head like Joh Keats's angushed cry in:

I cry your mercy -- pity -- love -- ay, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmask'd, and being seen -- without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole, -- all -- all -- be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, -- those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, --
Yourself -- your soul -- in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom, or I die,
Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes -- the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

I used to think I was Horatio, I am bloody Zhivago from the toe to the top of my head! Some literary life indeed! Where is the next big novel of human endurance and of love? Where is the next Hugh Kenner? Why did Keats go on living? Where have all the diciples gone? My kingdom sold, sold for a mole on that beautiful face! (khal i rukhsar i yaar i man!). When asked by the Sultan of Ghazna about the price of his huge kingdom, the blind poet Rudki answered, "just a mole on my beloved's face!". I think this is all it was worth. All gone in a frenzy of madness. But boy, don't I love that one mole that I got for all my dreams and all my ambitions! If I had ten empires, I would have given them away. Beautiful to live two, three or even four lives simultaneously!

[Bitterfly]

Still there is a devil in me howling for absinthe, blood, outrageous acts like walking a lobster down our high-street, useless, fruitless friendship with servile, self-seeking, ignorant snobs, the insolence of office, the pangs of desprized love, all things self-destructive, to be like

Ainsi qu'un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange
Le sein martyrisé d'une antique catin...

That's beauty as well. Beauty of self-destruction/violence/provocation. I can't say I live like that though - too much morality has rubbed out my streak of cruelty, for instance. But I like the idea of debauchery (wonderful French film, by the way, called Le Libertin, which could perfectly illustrate that line from Baudelaire). But still, that's why I don't think people who are anxious about eating healthy food, not drinking or smoking, going to bed early, buying a flat and saving up money for their retirement before they're thirty etc live beautiful lives. They're too careful with themselves - and if I understand you well (i'm not sure I do though :D ), that's where you're going too, no?

And I was thinking about the dandies. I think I associate the artist's life with them and the decadents.

And yeah, read read read...

[andave_ya]

That's good, Bitter, I like that. Beauty is so, how should I put it, so beautiful. I love beauty. I love beautiful people, children, music, paintings, Raphael and Ginevra Benci. Still there is a devil in me howling for absinthe, blood, outrageous acts like walking a lobster down our high-street, useless, fruitless friendship with servile, self-seeking, ignorant snobs, the insolence of office, the pangs of desprized love, all things self-destructive, to be like

Ainsi qu'un débauché pauvre qui baise et mange
Le sein martyrisé d'une antique catin...

Then there is the dandy. Oscar Wilde, Stephen Frye. Stephen Frye as Oscar Wilde:


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/518WW0RQJAL._SS500_.jpg

Wow! Debauchery and sphistication incarnate. Rimbaud and Lord Alfred Tennyson rolled into one! There are so many different ways of 'living the literary life'. I chose to choose nothing! I just want to be. I just want to love beauty and occasionally let this love overflow into a tiny poem. I want time, to read and read and read. I want to read everything. I have a book in my head, a novel. I used to write occasionally but feel a lot distracted during this last year or so. (been falling in and out of love with the same person which has left two thoroughly confused souls on a planet where most of the inabitants seem to know where they are going!) More often than not, I hear a scream inside my head like Joh Keats's angushed cry in:

I cry your mercy -- pity -- love -- ay, love!
Merciful love that tantalizes not,
One-thoughted, never-wandering, guileless love,
Unmask'd, and being seen -- without a blot!
O! let me have thee whole, -- all -- all -- be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss, -- those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast, --
Yourself -- your soul -- in pity give me all,
Withhold no atom's atom, or I die,
Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall,
Forget, in the mist of idle misery,
Life's purposes -- the palate of my mind
Losing its gust, and my ambition blind!

I used to think I was Horatio, I am bloody Zhivago from the toe to the top of my head! Some literary life indeed! Where is the next big novel of human endurance and of love? Where is the next Hugh Kenner? Why did Keats go on living? Where have all the diciples gone? My kingdom sold, sold for a mole on that beautiful face! (khal i rukhsar i yaar i man!). When asked by the Sultan of Ghazna about the price of his huge kingdom, the blind poet Rudki answered, "just a mole on my beloved's face!". I think this is all it was worth. All gone in a frenzy of madness. But boy, don't I love that one mole that I got for all my dreams and all my ambitions! If I had ten empires, I would have given them away. Beautiful to live two, three or even four lives simultaneously!


My heart is fraught with yearnings deep concealed,
With strivings of a spirit unresigned--
Ye burning thoughts! O be ye confined,
Lest in too fierce a fire my soul be steeled!
- James F. Cooper, Jr

(okay, it's telling me my message is too short. Better?)

[Kafka's Crow]

He turned away from her suddenly and set off across the
strand. His cheeks were aflame; his body was aglow; his limbs
were trembling. On and on and on and on he strode, far out
over the sands, singing wildly to the sea, crying to greet the
advent of the life that had cried to him.
Her image had passed into his soul for ever and no word
had broken the holy silence of his ecstasy. Her eyes had called
him and his soul had leaped at the call. To live, to err, to fall,
to triumph, to recreate life out of life! A wild angel had appeared
to him, the angel of mortal youth and beauty, an envoy
from the fair courts of life, to throw open before him in an instant
of ecstasy the gates of all the ways of error and glory.
On and on and on and on!
He halted suddenly and heard his heart in the silence. How
far had he walked? What hour was it?
There was no human figure near him nor any sound borne
to him over the air. But the tide was near the turn and
already the day was on the wane. He turned landward and
ran towards the shore and, running up the sloping beach,
reckless of the sharp shingle, found a sandy nook amid a ring
of tufted sandknolls and lay down there that the peace and silence
of the evening might still the riot of his blood.
He felt above him the vast indifferent dome and the calm
processes of the heavenly bodies; and the earth beneath him,
the earth that had borne him, had taken him to her breast.

James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

This is the kind of artistic life I had yearned for: Youth, beauty, creativity, danger and risk. Youth has disappeared but I go on, I can't go on, I will go on!

[LitNetIsGreat]

Oh, some wonderful, wonderful stuff here, the Wilde, the Keats, Baudelaire, Joyce thoughts like these:

For me living an artist's life means not being overly preoccupied with material aspects of life but giving importance to aesthetics: trying to live as beautifully, or at least as gracefully, as possible. Not being "petit-bourgeois" in mind.

And these:

And yeah, read read read...

And these too:

Beauty is so, how should I put it, so beautiful. I love beauty. I love beautiful people, children, music, paintings, Raphael and Ginevra Benci. Still there is a devil in me howling for absinthe, blood, outrageous acts like walking a lobster down our high-street, useless, fruitless friendship with servile, self-seeking, ignorant snobs, the insolence of office, the pangs of desprized love, all things self-destructive.

Surely the only life to live is the literary one? Stuff the life of the pettie bourgeois and stuff the life of the wage slave. Stuff “reality” it is to my books that I turn to tell me what is truly real, things of this nature:

It will be a marvellous thing - the true personality of man - when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flowerlike, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. An yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. An yet while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us, by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It ill be as wonderful as the personality of a child.

"The Soul of Man Under Socialism" Oscar wilde.

[stlukesguild]

Must say I have a few lost illusions of the artist's life. I still haven't managed that garret in Paris... right on the Seine.

Ha, would cost a bomb now.

Tell me about it. I couldn't even afford to do the grungy American Abstract Expressionists' variation and have the bombed-out old factory live-work studio in Manhattan. Such space is now reserved for high-end corporate lawyers and investment brokers.

Kafka... you wax poetic today... and you sing the praises of that which has been outlawed by many Modernists: beauty. Personally... as I have aged... I find that ugly expressionism is less and less interesting, while beauty... well surely Keats had it right all along. Keats and Wilde. (And isn't Wilde always right about everything?). Yes... Raphael and Ginevra de Benci with her flawless full moon face enthroned before Leonardo's unearthly landscape of spiky juniper plants. And Botticelli's Primavera. God! That's beauty!

[Kafka's Crow]

Kafka... you wax poetic today... and you sing the praises of that which has been outlawed by many Modernists: beauty. Personally... as I have aged... I find that ugly expressionism is less and less interesting, while beauty... well surely Keats had it right all along. Keats and Wilde. (And isn't Wilde always right about everything?). Yes... Raphael and Ginevra de Benci with her flawless full moon face enthroned before Leonardo's unearthly landscape of spiky juniper plants. And Botticelli's Primavera. God! That's beauty!

I never liked modern art, to be honest. Literature, yes but modern art is too stark for my liking. Literature has beautiful things to offer: James Joyce (specially the passage quoted above), Pound's Cantos, Eliot, even the bare landscapes of Samuel Beckett's works offer lyrical beauty at times. But modernist painting hasn't got that for me. Please point me towards one truly beautiful modernist painting. The poppies of Flanders are mentioned repeatedly in literature but why painters overlooked the persistent, resilient, unmissable presence of beauty in the midst of all the horrors that their times required them to depict? Why did Picasso fail to make that one flower beautiful that seemingly blossoms near the broken sword of the fallen warrior in Guernica? It is drab and uncouth charcoal lines like everything else in the painting! It is there, beauty can never be excluded but don't let it blend and disappear in all the other rubbish, please. Make it stand out, give it its due place, i-e on the pedestal. Bring it out. Crisis sells, death sells, disaster sells, pain sells, pleasure sells, ecstasy of the flesh sells. Good news does not sell, peace and calm do not sell, ecstasy of the mind does not sell, beauty in its essence does not sell. That's what is killing beauty, its inability to become a commodity. All you, who dream of a life artistic, make Pound's Canto xlv (With Usura) your mantra. This poem has the answer for us:

Usura rusteth the chisel
It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
It gnaweth the thread in the loom
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;
Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered
Emerald findeth no Memling

http://reactor-core.org/usura.html

I love this poem and read it whenever my heart yearns for an "artistic life" or beauty and love. It tells me what went wrong.

I was, actually in love with Ginevra de Benci for many, many years. Then I met a woman who looked like Ginevra. It was nice having her around but she was married and had two children! Didn't Leonardo paint that portrait at the time of Ginevra's marriage? I was a little late then! 'Too much water has passed under the Butt Bridge in both directions', since then (as Samuel Beckett would say. Butt Bridge is actually a bridge on River Liffey in Dublin, I thought Sam Beckett was taking the piss. Very factual, very humorous!) I once wrote a poem about the Lady and the juniper tree. I read La Vita Nova at that time. There are so many ways you could fall in love with beauty. I posted this poem in the 'Personal Poetry' section of this forum the other day. It sums up my ideas on love, beauty, risk, self-destruction and life:
http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36126&highlight=revolution

[stlukesguild]

I never liked modern art, to be honest. Literature, yes but modern art is too stark for my liking. Literature has beautiful things to offer: James Joyce (specially the passage quoted above), Pound's Cantos, Eliot, even the bare landscapes of Samuel Beckett's works offer lyrical beauty at times. But modernist painting hasn't got that for me. Please point me towards one truly beautiful modernist painting.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/bonnard_model_in_backlightmedium.jpg
Pierre Bonnard-Perfume Bottle

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/klimt_kissss.jpg
Gustav Klimt-The Kiss

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/GirlMirrorsmall.jpg
Pablo Picasso-Girl at the Mirror

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/08904_henri_matisse.jpg
Henri Matisse-Still Life and Open Window

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/mmsomethingsomething.jpg
Edouard Vuillard-Still Life on Mantle

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Henri-Rousseau-Snake-Charmer.jpg
Henri Rousseau-Snake Charmer

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Tooker13.jpg
George Tooker-Couple in Window

Of course we could argue endlessly as to what exactly constitutes "Modernism" and what constitutes "beauty"... and there is no way to convince someone into recognizing or appreciating the beauty in a work of art if they cannot see it. To my mind these are just a few examples of the wealth of "beauty" that exists in Modernism. If "beauty" is missing from art, it is missing since the demise of Modernism... since aesthetics and form were rejected in favor of the idea as the center of art. Indeed... it is only under certain theories of Post-Modernism that beauty itself has become suspect... almost considered proof of the shallowness of a work of art or an artist.

It has been suggested by some critics that "beauty" and concern with aesthetics have been dismissed as shallow because they imagined as being inherently feminine... as opposed, no doubt, to the more rigorous art that is more focused upon rigorous thought. No doubt such a criticism is somewhat valid. It echoes the thoughts of the contemporary British painter, Howard Hodgkin, who points out that the focus on color has long been imagined as proof of the less-than-serious nature of one's art. By the same token, a recent examination of Matisse pointed out that many of the critics of Matisse suggested that his paintings were too colorful... and too beautiful to be considered as serious as the more "masculine" work of Picasso.

The poppies of Flanders are mentioned repeatedly in literature but why painters overlooked the persistent, resilient, unmissable presence of beauty in the midst of all the horrors that their times required them to depict? Why did Picasso fail to make that one flower beautiful that seemingly blossoms near the broken sword of the fallen warrior in Guernica? It is drab and uncouth charcoal lines like everything else in the painting!

I would suggest that the beauty which exists even in the shadow of the most ultimate ugliness and horror is indeed there... and it has been recognized by many artists... including Picasso:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/SteersSkullPabloPicassosmall.jpg

In the darkest days of the Second World War Picasso presented a still-life with a bull's skull against the absolute pitch black of night. And still he suggested the regal cloth of honor in the royal purple... demanding that this dark scene be recognized for its link with the regal art of the past.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/128sm.jpg

Max Beckmann presented horrific scenes of torture... alluding to both Hieronymus Bosch and the nazis... and yet presented these scenes in a brilliant, luminous color anchored with a bituminous black that suggested a gorgeous Gothic stained-glass window.

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/BaconTriptychsmall.jpg

Francis Bacon imagined the mortality and meanness of humanity in the most ghastly scenes... staged with the most exquisite sensitivity to design and composition... as if he were composing a Renaissance altarpiece.

It is there, beauty can never be excluded but don't let it blend and disappear in all the other rubbish, please. Make it stand out, give it its due place, i-e on the pedestal. Bring it out. Crisis sells, death sells, disaster sells, pain sells, pleasure sells, ecstasy of the flesh sells. Good news does not sell, peace and calm do not sell, ecstasy of the mind does not sell, beauty in its essence does not sell. That's what is killing beauty, its inability to become a commodity.

There are some artists who have taken a contrary philosophy... fearing that what we define as "beauty" is too easily commodified... coveted and fought over at the marketplace. Their thoughts... with which I do not agree... is that art must offend the bourgeoisie... it must be, as Picasso once put it... a finger up the bourgeoisie a$$. Personally I find shock for the sake of shock far to easy... while true beauty is far more difficult than it may first appear.

All you, who dream of a life artistic, make Pound's Canto xlv (With Usura) your mantra. This poem has the answer for us:

Usura rusteth the chisel
It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
It gnaweth the thread in the loom
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;
Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered
Emerald findeth no Memling

I love this poem and read it whenever my heart yearns for an "artistic life" or beauty and love. It tells me what went wrong.

Perhaps... but then again it may also convey the inability of those who are "experts"... even artists within a single genre, to recognize the beauty in other artistic forms when these go beyond the accepted forms that beauty took in the past. I have pointed out to my studio-mates that their inability to appreciate the more jarring "beauty" of Gorecki, Ornette Coleman, Osvaldo Golijov... or any Modernist/Contemporary "classical" composer is certainly not unlike the response that many others have when responding to Modernist/Post-Modernist painting.

I was, actually in love with Ginevra de Benci for many, many years. Then I met a woman who looked like Ginevra. It was nice having her around but she was married and had two children! Didn't Leonardo paint that portrait at the time of Ginevra's marriage? I was a little late then!

This sounds like something out of Gautier. Surely you have read Omphale and/or The Fleece of Gold?

[JBI]

Where's the distinction? Is Klimt a modernist or a Secessionist/symbolist?

[JBI]

Must say I have a few lost illusions of the artist's life. I still haven't managed that garret in Paris... right on the Seine.

Ha, would cost a bomb now.

Tell me about it. I couldn't even afford to do the grungy American Abstract Expressionists' variation and have the bombed-out old factory live-work studio in Manhattan. Such space is now reserved for high-end corporate lawyers and investment brokers.

Kafka... you wax poetic today... and you sing the praises of that which has been outlawed by many Modernists: beauty. Personally... as I have aged... I find that ugly expressionism is less and less interesting, while beauty... well surely Keats had it right all along. Keats and Wilde. (And isn't Wilde always right about everything?). Yes... Raphael and Ginevra de Benci with her flawless full moon face enthroned before Leonardo's unearthly landscape of spiky juniper plants. And Botticelli's Primavera. God! That's beauty!
You can still buy cheap houses in Toronto Suburbs!

[stlukesguild]

Where's the distinction? Is Klimt a modernist or a Secessionist/symbolist?

It depends upon how one defines "Modernism". The broadest definitions begin with Courbet and continue through Abstract Expressionism. Other definitions are more restrictive and begin with Picasso's Les Demoiselle d'Avignon and exclude anything not meeting a certain Modernist criteria (whatever that may be). I am somewhat tempted to place the start of Modernism with the Post-Impressionism. Impressionism... for all its brilliance and innovations... is still rooted in the notion that a painting presents an illusionistic picture of the visual world. The primary shift of Modernism... far more central even than Pound's dictum to "make it new"... is the move away from the notion that a fundamental and essential element of art (especially painting) is this illusionistic rendering of the visual world. Post-Modernism... Van Gogh, Gauguin, Bonnard, Munch, etc... begin the process of overturning this notion which had been held since the Renaissance. Of course Cubism and Picasso would provide the true break... establishing the notion that painting is but an organization of color, shapes, lines, and sometimes images upon a flat surface. Klimt, like many early Modernists, benefited greatly from an intense academic training... but he certainly made great us of Modernist vocabularies. His use of flat patterns and designs owe much to non-Western traditions (Persian and Islamic) as well as to pre-Renaissance art (especially Byzantine mosaics)... but none of these artistic traditions would have been seriously embraced prior to the shift of Modernism.

[Xcape]

I have an extremely clichéd imaginary image of the ‘literary life’. You know it is all about loafing around on over-sized divans, wearing comfy loose-fitting clothes and sipping absinthe. I'm sure it will be like this in after a few more years of study anyway, don't shatter my illusions please.

:lol:

Yes, I have the very same illusion. Surely it will be like that once I have 'Dr' in front of my name ;)

[Etienne]

You can still buy cheap houses in Toronto Suburbs!

Yes but Toronto, honestly, is not exactly what I'd call a beautiful city...

[Jozanny]

For me living an artist's life means not being overly preoccupied with material aspects of life but giving importance to aesthetics: trying to live as beautifully, or at least as gracefully, as possible. Not being "petit-bourgeois" in mind.

Charming sentiment, that to some degree fits my own, but I always needed specific-rendered role models, somewhat less lavish than Kafka's exuberance for Wilde. Decadent wit and art for art's sake was quaint when I was an impressionable underclassman. Looking at it through my current lens, it moves down a notch to nearly chirpy. I always looked at my professors. The pragmatist who studied the impact of technology and its intersection with the power of Empire, whether Roman or American, who conveniently died (http://cgi.ebay.com/Cultural-Treasures-of-the-Internet-by-Michael-Clark-..._W0QQitemZ160297878831QQcmdZViewItemQQimsxZ2008 1111?IMSfp=TL081111112003r38508) of cancer about a year after I made the terrible error of asking him if he wanted to go out to dinner. Some students can turn mentors into partners, but that fate always eluded me. His cultural education was admirable, and his ghost sat on my shoulder of embarrassed grief for a long time, almost identical to the fate of my Grecian-American editor, who did so much to give my work exposure in my locality. I did not ask her out to dinner, but did ask for a critique of my best poetry manuscript, some months before she was defeated by breast cancer. I had heard she was ill, oddly enough, in my disability-activist circles, but had no idea it was terminal, and her loss to me is equally tinged with shame for that.

They both had qualities of containment and discipline worthy of following, and I could never quite manage the degree of imitation aspired to, being a stumble bum gaffe prone disabled poet who could never quite cut it into the career being the aesthetic.

It isn't beauty with a capital *B*; it is a refined sensibility, a reticence as a way of living your art, which my recent essay in Breath & Shadow is somewhat preoccupied with. Beauty can be found in any moral paradigm, as luke points out.

[Bitterfly]

It has been suggested by some critics that "beauty" and concern with aesthetics have been dismissed as shallow because they imagined as being inherently feminine... as opposed, no doubt, to the more rigorous art that is more focused upon rigorous thought.

Does that idea of beauty as feminine come from the Burkean (or Kantian) distinction between the beautiful and the sublime? Is it still used nowadays? It's strange that the works of so many masculine artists can be "dismissed...as inherently feminine".:confused:


Perhaps... but then again it may also convey the inability of those who are "experts"... even artists within a single genre, to recognize the beauty in other artistic forms when these go beyond the accepted forms that beauty took in the past. I have pointed out to my studio-mates that their inability to appreciate the more jarring "beauty" of Gorecki, Ornette Coleman, Osvaldo Golijov... or any Modernist/Contemporary "classical" composer is certainly not unlike the response that many others have when responding to Modernist/Post-Modernist painting.

Yes! Beauty is almost a question of habit. Only some musics/paintings/poems are more difficult to see as beautiful than others, because they don't fit classical criteria. I didn't like Picasso or Matisse straight away, for instance, but now I find their works beautiful. Same for some of Schubert's pieces, funnily enough. I wonder whether I'll end up finding dodecaphonic music beautiful one day though - I know some people do.

Thanks a lot, by the way, for the pictures and comments. Very interesting.:thumbs_up


Charming sentiment, that to some degree fits my own, but I always needed specific-rendered role models, somewhat less lavish than Kafka's exuberance for Wilde. Decadent wit and art for art's sake was quaint when I was an impressionable underclassman.

Hmm, I agree and disagree with you. Of course it's easier being impressed by and try to follow such models when you're just out of your teens (don't know why, though). But as an adult, while you can admit to yourself that you'll never live such a life (too many responsibilities), and that's probably part of growing up, I don't think it's wise to completely forsake them. There's nothing particularly "quaint" about decadent art, if you think of Huysmans or Mirbeau. Rather, it points to a certain ideal - of cleverness, of aesthetics, of beauty - and what a pity it is to abandon all ideals! I'm rather sick of having to leave them to adolescents! :D

[stlukesguild]

It has been suggested by some critics that "beauty" and concern with aesthetics have been dismissed as shallow because they imagined as being inherently feminine... as opposed, no doubt, to the more rigorous art that is more focused upon rigorous thought.

Does that idea of beauty as feminine come from the Burkean (or Kantian) distinction between the beautiful and the sublime? Is it still used nowadays? It's strange that the works of so many masculine artists can be "dismissed...as inherently feminine".

Since the Renaissance there has always been a sort of division between masters of disegno (drawing and design) and color. One can almost attribute this to Vasari who argued that the Roman and Florentine painters who focused upon drawing were somehow more "serious" than the sensuous colorists of Venice. Intriguingly, a large majority of the Florentine/Roman tradition focused more upon the male nude than the female (Botticelli and Raphael being obvious exceptions. Arguably this may owe much to the sexual preferences of these artists (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Bronzino, Pontormo, Mantegna, Donatello)... but it also makes a certain logical sense. The male nude with greater definition of musculature is far more conducive to a style that focuses upon linear contours and sculptural form... while the softer female nude was far more suitable to a greater tactile sensuality and soft-focus atmosphere as found in the Venetian tradition.

These two polarities continued into later painting. Rembrandt and Velazquez were clearly colorists... or rather, "painterly painters". Ingres... and even Blake were far more about line... disegno. Of course there was always Rubens who could draw like Michelangelo and paint like Titian... and as such he has long proven problematic for some. But then again... if we are honest we will recognize that this division is not so clear. Ingres, for example, is an absolutely exquisite colorist. Nevertheless... what he does exhibit in his work (and the same can be seen in Blake, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Pontormo, Bronzino, etc...) is a clear "abstraction". Blake would declare, for example, that while there may be no such lines or abstractions in nature, they do exist in imagination.

It would seem thus that the focus upon disegno became a focus upon abstraction... and abstraction, as an invention of the imagination, was thought of as more rigorous than the colorists who merely responded to their visual perceptions. Cezanne famously said of Monet, "Monet is but an eye... but my God! What an eye!" In spite of the compliment, one must admit that there is also a certain condensation involved. This condescending manner continued into Modernism where a great sensualist such as Matisse or Bonnard could be dismissed as intellectually "light-weight"... after all, they were but responding to their perceptions. Duchamp would push the gap even further. Fearing the old French dictum, "dumb as a painter" he developed an artistic language in which the idea was everything... the form negligible.

Duchamp's impact continues to mark art today. Where a great painter recognizes that the process of painting... whether one is completely inventing one's imagery... or responding to a physical model... involves continuous thought... to the point that each mark is often weighed as carefully as a single word in a lyric poem... The conceptualists or Post-Duchampians argue that aesthetic and formal concerns are somehow false. They would have us all believe that Matisse and Bonnard and Morandi are are somehow not as good as they appear... while the gallery laden with inflated condoms, cuckoo clocks, sandbags, and random documentations are somehow far better than they look.

Of course they would never blatantly suggest that Matisse or any great sensual painter is too "feminine" while the Minimalists, the Art Brut, and the performance artists are more "masculine". Such would be clearly "politically incorrect"... and suicide as far as one's reputation went. Still the sub-text is clear. Art based in rigorous intellectual theory is to be far more valued than art rooted in sensuality and the artist's response to the physical, tactile world. Of course I am clearly biased toward the art rooted in sensory experience... art that embraces beauty and color and the sensual touch.

[Etienne]

StLukes, I think you are giving far too much credit to some of those Post-Duchampians, my experience with them is that they mostly make crappy art because they cannot make anything beautiful, but still want to pass as artists.

[Bitterfly]

Yep, it's annoying how ambivalent they are: I know how I always hesitate between wondering whether it's genuinely art, and thinking they're just intellectualising something quite uninteresting and/or trying to provoke. A friend of mine told me about this exhibition in Versailles, where a contemporary artist has, for instance, placed a sculpture of Michael Jackson and his monkey in front of a portrait of Louis the XIVth.... Not quite sure about what to think about it.

Thank stlukesguild, I have the impression that I grasp the implications more clearly now! Abstraction vs senses then. I definitely prefer art that makes an immediate impression on my senses.

[librarius_qui]

Some folks we consider artists now lived back then as common office workers ...

As well as some scientists.

I had a very interesting talk with a friend, these days, who loves to read. I thought with myself that she liked me because I write, and I'm intriguing, and, well, if she likes books, I'm a bit like a book, as well as books are like people.

A person learns from books. A writer writes books. A writer learns from people.

And, to finish with something else, there are a lot of arts ... Writing's one thing, painting is another, singing, playing a musical instrument are yet other things, and there's dancing as well, and theatre. I imagine you're talking about the life of a writer. I myself chose not to live from what I write, so, I have a common office worker life. I mean to sell [other people's] books, but not even this I managed to, not for long, anyway, however I haven't given up, and I work with something else ... I'd work gladly in a bar, I think, as a waiter. Only, it didn't happen this way.

And there are certain books I won't read at all! There are too many books, and I have a long line, and no hurry, and a short life. (I hope to reach Abraham's (out of the bible ...) life-span.)

I hope I'll get married! fer heaven's sake!, haha!

& I'm baroque ~


-x-


:crash:

[Etienne]

or trying to provoke.

The problem with this, is what accounts for the interest of the ready-made art of Duchamp, for example, and most of what followed from it. Duchamp presented a Fountain. Great, new idea, funny, shocking. Now tomorrow, I present a different Fountain as a piece of art. That's just boring, there's no shock anymore. That's just the problem with the ready-made art, it's that the art was the idea. All subsequent ready-made art attempt are simply presenting the same work over and over, even though it might be something else than the Fountain, it doesn't matter.

So besides the exception, most of what is made is this view becomes in fact, an attempt to provoke watchers into boringness and is almost an exercise to try to be impressed, entertained, or shocked. A lot of it is insipid and boring. It's telling the same joke twice.

Now if someone present an exposition of fountains, but those fountain appeal to the senses, now this is something entirely different. It would be in some way an insight of Duchamp's idea, and taking something quite ridiculous and making a piece of art for real. But the difference is that now the Fountain is the art as well, and not just the idea.

But in fact, I think this whole conception of Duchamp, was a big joke from him. He was making fun of people while having fun himself. Some people just took him too seriously.

[_Shannon_]

Is the literary life the one where you write absolutely nothing because there are a million children around vying for your attention and your creativity is channeled into creating and growing babies and your hands are perpetually covered in dish soap, or laundry soap, or bubble bath...and the closest you ever get to writing is making a tablet to practicing the alphabet or a list of spelling words?? And yet in your heart of hearts you think still, somewhere, you are a writer...if only you had words....and time...and quiet....and not being needed....

Or is the literary life the one where your home is girded with books, and you met your spouse working at the bookstore where he still works, where everyone who ever gets a gift from you knows that they'll be getting a book. The one where when your gaggle stumbles into the Waffle House all but the smallest have books in hand...the one where several of the people in your home regularly stay up far too late reading or listening to stories???

LOL! Then yes--we, I, live a very literary life!

[stlukesguild]

StLukes, I think you are giving far too much credit to some of those Post-Duchampians, my experience with them is that they mostly make crappy art because they cannot make anything beautiful, but still want to pass as artists.

That may be... but had they not been convinced during their years of formal studies in art school as to the merit of ideas and Duchampian conceptualism as opposed to art based upon drawing and painting... the image making that is the most primal urge behind the creation of art that begins when a child starts drawing Mom and the dog... had they not been pushed into spending far more time reading art criticism, and theory, and philosophers who naturally assume the idea is far more important that the form than they did with actually learning to draw and paint... they might have actually developed those skills. Surely very few 18-year olds enter art school because they wish to be the next conceptual artist. Most entered art school because they loved to draw... to create images. Unfortunately, the ideas of conceptual art can be quite seductive... and far easier to master than the skills needed to paint well.

[stlukesguild]

Yep, it's annoying how ambivalent they are: I know how I always hesitate between wondering whether it's genuinely art, and thinking they're just intellectualising something quite uninteresting and/or trying to provoke. A friend of mine told me about this exhibition in Versailles, where a contemporary artist has, for instance, placed a sculpture of Michael Jackson and his monkey in front of a portrait of Louis the XIVth.... Not quite sure about what to think about it.

Acckk!! You speak of Jeff Koons. The virtual Satan of contemporary art. Where Thomas Kinkade paints endless sentimental schlock that is loved by those with virtually no artistic sensibility (not far from those sad-eyed children of several decades ago), he is not given the least attention by the 'serious' art world. Yet Koons works are just as shallow... sentimental... glitzy and schlock-laden. The only difference is that Koons and his dealers have been able to convince a large enough audience that his work is "serious" because he recognizes how bad it is (which I don't believe) and as such they are saved by being ironic.

[stlukesguild]

But in fact, I think this whole conception of Duchamp, was a big joke from him. He was making fun of people while having fun himself. Some people just took him too seriously.

Exactly... If you read the history of Duchamp... and especially his Fountain... you will find that it was all intended as part of a grandiose joke upon the art world. Certainly the urinal was never intended to be actually seen as an art object. Perhaps the best critique of the iconic status of this work was the "artist" who peed in it, declaring that it was his intention to reduce the work to its original purpose. As conceptualism has grown more pervasive I have noticed that there is an increasing division of art world between those who would embrace art as idea and those who see themselves first as painters, print-makers, sculptors, etc... Where a few NY galleries and a few pompous critics once dominated what constituted ART... and what ART was GOOD ART, their control has greatly waned. Magazines such as American Art Collector now rival Art News and Art in America, and the strongest artists featured there are often able to demand prices that rival or even surpass the average Art in America artist.

[Etienne]

Exactly... If you read the history of Duchamp... and especially his Fountain... you will find that it was all intended as part of a grandiose joke upon the art world.

Well you know, I never had this confirmed, it just seemed to me so obvious. Duchamp is one of the characters I respect the most.


Certainly the urinal was never intended to be actually seen as an art object. Perhaps the best critique of the iconic status of this work was the "artist" who peed in it, declaring that it was his intention to reduce the work to its original purpose.

That's great :lol: Typically Duchampesque too.


Unfortunately, the ideas of conceptual art can be quite seductive... and far easier to master than the skills needed to paint well.

Well I do get what you mean, but let me add something here. It's that I don't think conceptual art is (should be) easier to master, in fact, I think it is (or should be) harder, as one should be able to paint well in order to create great conceptual art. What's easier is to fake or give the illusion of great art by playing on the ignorance of the public and it's will to appear sophisticated, or simply living in the illusion of doing great art, because of the general example. I do think that art today ought to be something else than what can be done through photographic means, for example, and in this respect a degree of conceptualism is needed, but as a mean to extend boundaries, and not to reduce art to "mere" conceptualism.

[Jozanny]

Is the literary life the one where you write absolutely nothing because there are a million children around vying for your attention and your creativity is channeled into creating and growing babies and your hands are perpetually covered in dish soap, or laundry soap, or bubble bath...and the closest you ever get to writing is making a tablet to practicing the alphabet or a list of spelling words?? And yet in your heart of hearts you think still, somewhere, you are a writer...if only you had words....and time...and quiet....and not being needed....

I have both, passed this stage, in that my bylines in recent years have left me with no doubt that I am capable of penetrating markets that I care to penetrate, and regressed back to it, in the sense that my plumbing no longer works (raises hand and says to medical science I will take that regenerated pig bladder thank you, and can we throw in a new colon while we're at it? This actually used to be the basis for some dramatic science fiction I loved to read, remarkable) and I am no more now than a hag-nanny, like Macbeth's witches, not quite female anymore. How do old women with increasingly brittle gray hair and a spinster's cocoon slowly enveloping, still live for the work itself? Should I ask Toni Morrison? Listening to her or reading her anymore I find tiresome, and only care vigorously for her *daddy* novel, Song of Solomon, and The Bluest Eye, which she wrote, in an afterword, "didn't work". I got her gist on that. The POV she tries with this horror story doesn't achieve what she attempts, but by Christ what a hard hitting brilliant failure this work is. Is that damning praise? When I read Beloved I thought it was time for her to retire, phew!


Or is the literary life the one where your home is girded with books, and you met your spouse working at the bookstore where he still works, where everyone who ever gets a gift from you knows that they'll be getting a book. The one where when your gaggle stumbles into the Waffle House all but the smallest have books in hand...the one where several of the people in your home regularly stay up far too late reading or listening to stories???

LOL! Then yes--we, I, live a very literary life!

Sounds like a worthy essay on the matter of literary living!:p:thumbs_up

[Bitterfly]

It's that I don't think conceptual art is (should be) easier to master, in fact, I think it is (or should be) harder, as one should be able to paint well in order to create great conceptual art.

Yes! Like to dance good modern ballet you have to master classical ballet.

Stlukesguild, it's rather reassuring to hear a specialist saying that contemporary art isn't that interesting. Because, as Etienne says, there's always that wish to appear sophisticated and therefore to shut up when you think you're viewing crap, and not at all great art. I've recently started to air my real thoughts, when I go to see a show that obviously takes its public for a bunch of fools, but it's hard not to go with the stream. And there's always a risk that you've really misunderstood the artist.

And the problem is that almost all novel forms of art were denigrated by the public when they first appeared (I read a book about Impressionism, recently, and the comments of the exhibition-goers!!), so one wonders whether one is not making the same mistake... I wonder what will be said about Jeff Koons in fifty years' time...

[Jozanny]

Well I do get what you mean, but let me add something here. It's that I don't think conceptual art is (should be) easier to master, in fact, I think it is (or should be) harder, as one should be able to paint well in order to create great conceptual art. What's easier is to fake or give the illusion of great art by playing on the ignorance of the public and it's will to appear sophisticated, or simply living in the illusion of doing great art, because of the general example. I do think that art today ought to be something else than what can be done through photographic means, for example, and in this respect a degree of conceptualism is needed, but as a mean to extend boundaries, and not to reduce art to "mere" conceptualism.

I have been trying to stay out of this, because my art appreciation these days extends about as far as finding Simon Schama's public tutorials sexually attractive, but I cannot damn photography as an entirely technical process with no artistic merit, if I understand your objection, although I might seriously hedge on the issue of computer animation and graphics. I am more accessible to pink sharks suspended in tanks and glittering madonna's partly sculpted in elephant dung than luke or bitterfly or you might be. Crass commercial materialism can teach as much as neo-classical reverence does, in my book. Like anything else, the mess will sort itself out, and when the smoke clears what's left standing will command respect. The literary world is not immune to this. One has to ask if Acker's joke (that she plagiarized and considered this worthy conceptually before her cancer metastasized her and any subsequent output as an issue:eek:, although she did lose in court against Faulkner's estate, while she was sick), is worthy on its on merits. I don't know. She does dollop out degradation nearly as well as any inner city drug dealer.

[librarius_qui]

The problem with this, is what accounts for the interest of the ready-made art of Duchamp, for example, and most of what followed from it. Duchamp presented a Fountain. Great, new idea, funny, shocking. Now tomorrow, I present a different Fountain as a piece of art. That's just boring, there's no shock anymore. That's just the problem with the ready-made art, it's that the art was the idea. All subsequent ready-made art attempt are simply presenting the same work over and over, even though it might be something else than the Fountain, it doesn't matter.

So besides the exception, most of what is made is this view becomes in fact, an attempt to provoke watchers into boringness and is almost an exercise to try to be impressed, entertained, or shocked. A lot of it is insipid and boring. It's telling the same joke twice.

(...)

I don't know ... What's a fountain in your time? This fountain you portray, will it last, within 50, 100 years? Will there be fountains within this period of time? (contemporary questions are onto ecology issues in a way ...)

If it does so you won't be alive to know anything about it, so, what's the difference, but: do you keep portraying things around you, no matter what the future will be?

Or do you care more to what critics say? Or about academic environment(s) opinions?

Do you write at all?

And you can write to someone, all right, or you can write to humanity, or to eternity ... You choose your public, and other people will like it or not but BLAST them! I choose my public!


:crash:

[stlukesguild]

Well I do get what you mean, but let me add something here. It's that I don't think conceptual art is (should be) easier to master, in fact, I think it is (or should be) harder...

I agree that conceptual art done well is not easy to do. It demands a sensitivity to the materials and objects that the artist has chosen to recontextualize so that the result is not without a concern for aesthetics (or dare I say "beauty", and resonates with multiple layers of possible meaning. Among some truly fine works of conceptual art I would certainly include:

Meret Oppenheim's Object which plays with allusions to touch and taste and surreal intimations of sexuality:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/00043099.jpg

Man Ray's simple Violin d' Ingres:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/leViolondIngres1924.jpg

Joseph Cornell's poetic shadow boxes... including the Magnificent De Medici Slot Machines:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/dsm1.jpg

Ed Kienholtz' harrowing State Mental Hospital where goldfish bowls replace the face/minds of the inmates who can only imagine (as in the neon dream bubble) more of the same:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/state_hospital_int.jpg

The reality is that much of the finest "conceptual art" is created by artists utilizing craft skills outside of the usual drawing/painting/sculpture/print experience. In a manner these artists bring to the art world that outside influence of which JBI has spoken as being necessary to infuse an old tradition with new energy. Martin Puryear, an African-American sculptor living in rural Pennsylvania studied with master woodworkers and furniture craftsmen in Scandinavia before bringing these sensibilities to the non-utilitarian world of art:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/image27.jpg

Ron Meuck built upon the skills he mastered in creating special effects for the film industry using modern polymers, latex, foam, etc... in creating his unsettling hyperrealist sculptures:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/y1pmpov3THPlbHq0XvUIA0gg_JY-aIOLSX6.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/y1pmpov3THPlbGFwIN0fR5pGxffuSZN2Zmi.jpg

Still other artists, dating back to Richard Smithson's Spiral Jetty have utilized only natural materials creating works that remain in nature and that eventually will erode:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/IMG091.jpg

Perhaps the most interesting contemporary earth artist is Andy Goldsworthy... whose work has an almost Japanese Zen quality to it:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/goldsworthy.jpg

All of his works are created on the spot and left to the elements... sometimes lasting but a few moments. Only the photographic records remain:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/gold_treesoul.jpg

In a variation on earth art there is Richard Greaves' "anarchitecture"... buildings constructed of materials claimed from collapsed homes... put together without the use of any nails, screws or other artificial means they are essentially a version of a house of cards:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/mmsomethingsmall.jpg

Even the book has become a source of conceptual art... scribbling and doodling in these instances:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/moleskineframed123.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/dannyglix-noxiouss.jpg

What's easier is to fake or give the illusion of great art by playing on the ignorance of the public and it's will to appear sophisticated, or simply living in the illusion of doing great art, because of the general example.

Bitterfly- Stlukesguild, it's rather reassuring to hear a specialist saying that contemporary art isn't that interesting. Because, as Etienne says, there's always that wish to appear sophisticated and therefore to shut up when you think you're viewing crap, and not at all great art. I've recently started to air my real thoughts, when I go to see a show that obviously takes its public for a bunch of fools, but it's hard not to go with the stream. And there's always a risk that you've really misunderstood the artist.

While I largely bristle at the use of the old analogy to the "Emperor's New Clothes"... which is largely thrown out by those without the least understanding or appreciation of art post-Impressionism... there is something of that involved today. There is a gross amount of money invested in the arts... but the pool of what is available has continually shrunk. Even Bill Gates... with all the wealth he has at hand... could not possibly build an art collection to rival the Frick Museum (for example). There are simply not that many masterful works by old masters still in private hands. For this reason prices of Impressionism and Modernism and even contemporary art have spiraled beyond all reason. As any artist knows... in most cases the production of art is a slow... deliberate process. Large paintings by Rubens or Velasquez often demanded months of labor. Vermeer created all of 40 paintings in his life. Rembrandt may have painted as many as 400. Dealers now want artist who can turn out 50 or 100 new large works a year... thus fueling demand. Very few critics are going to come out and tell you how bad much of the work is... not when their salaries come from the advertising dollars paid by the dealers to the very publications for which they are employed. The few exceptions, such as Robert Hughes and Donald Kuspit generally write for magazines not dependent upon gallery support (Time, Newsweek), newspapers, and/or are employed through universities.

I do think that art today ought to be something else than what can be done through photographic means, for example, and in this respect a degree of conceptualism is needed, but as a mean to extend boundaries, and not to reduce art to "mere" conceptualism.

Yes... I agree there should be a place for everything. But then my initial comments were about the manner in which many of the supporters of conceptual art would not have it that way. Sean Scully, one of the leading contemporary abstract painters, admitted that he once thought that such art could co-exist peacefully... but now he states that for the artist it has become an either/or position.

JoZ- I am more accessible to pink sharks suspended in tanks and glittering madonna's partly sculpted in elephant dung than luke or bitterfly or you might be. Crass commercial materialism can teach as much as neo-classical reverence does, in my book.

JoZ... believe it or not I am far less conservative as an artist than you might suppose. However, I have no place for Hirst's shark suspended in formaldehyde (all graciously funded by Charles Saatchi) nor Chris Ofili's Sh** Madonna and Sh** Christ... Las Vegas sequins mounted on giant elephant turds and passed off as conveying some deep spiritual meaning. If I wish to learn from crass commercialism I have no lack of access to the internet, Hollywood, billboards, TV, etc... Fine artists who attempt to take on popular culture at its own game are simply ridiculous. They remain popular, however, because we have endless millionaires and even billionaires who made their money in real estate, oil, junk bonds, or the tech industry... but know nothing about art. They do know, however, that they loved Scooby Doo and Batman when they were kids.

[Etienne]

I loved Meret Oppenheim's Object, had never seen that one. I remember that Violin d'Ingres, as one of my friend who is a violonist wanted such a tattoo on her back too. I love Ron Mueck too, his sculptures are simply incredible. Besides I've been introduced to Andy Goldsworthy's work recently, this one striked me very much:
http://www.monkeysvsrobots.com/mvsrpm/images/uploads/andy_sticks.jpg


The reality is that much of the finest "conceptual art" is created by artists utilizing craft skills outside of the usual drawing/painting/sculpture/print experience.

Yes, of course, but the point is that the medium is of no importance to the fact that an artist needs the traditional skills of this medium before being able to create great art with this medium.

[librarius_qui]

is there conceptualism in literature?
this seems to be going into visual arts ...

no doubt the arts walk together, but . . .


There are many arts. Are all arts part of theatre ( / cinema)? Once I thought this, because to theatre you need writing, painting and music.

Writing, portraying and music are very different from each other.

The lives of a writer, of a portrayer, and of a musician are completely different from each other.

A writer fights against being famous. A portrayer doesn't seem to care about it. A musician only cares about living, and working all right! (I wish I were a musician ... I believe they're the happiest! I can hardly play a mandolin, and doubt I'll ever do any art out of it! ...)

Anyway, the subject was "Living the literary life".

What's this anyway? Living like a writer? Living like an artist? Talking about art in general, and having opinion on it? ... I have to say that the thread attracts me, but that I'm kind of confused! ...


:crash:

[JBI]

is there conceptualism in literature?
this seems to be going into visual arts ...

no doubt the arts walk together, but . . .


There are many arts. Are all arts part of theatre ( / cinema)? Once I thought this, because to theatre you need writing, painting and music.

Writing, portraying and music are very different from each other.

The lives of a writer, of a portrayer, and of a musician are completely different from each other.

A writer fights against being famous. A portrayer doesn't seem to care about it. A musician only cares about living, and working all right! (I wish I were a musician ... I believe they're the happiest! I can hardly play a mandolin, and doubt I'll ever do any art out of it! ...)

Anyway, the subject was "Living the literary life".

What's this anyway? Living like a writer? Living like an artist? Talking about art in general, and having opinion on it? ... I have to say that the thread attracts me, but that I'm kind of confused! ...


:crash:
Some avant gaurde poetry borders on conceptualization, though none is really taken seriously. Though, some wacky things are coming out in recent times - things might get a little weird.

[stlukesguild]

I think quite often the lines between writer/artist/musician are blurred because they are not as far apart as they may seem. Rousseau began as a composer; E.T.A. Hoffmann started as a painter, a semi-successful composer (he still has a few pieces that are considered a minor part of the classical repertory). Eugenio Montale (who we are reading in the Poetry Group) began as a composer and singer; Theophile Gautier began as a painter. William Blake and Dante Rossetti are both admired equally as poets and visual artists... and this barely touches upon a few examples. The Japanese and Chines ideal was of the poet/painter/calligrapher. I think beyond the fact that many artists have tried their hand at one or more forms (music, poetry, painting, theater) they are quite often sensitive to other art forms... greatly enamored of other art forms... and at times directly influenced or inspired by other art forms. Degas loved the ballet, the opera, and the cabarets. The Abstract Expressionists were fueled on jazz (and alcohol). Rilke had Rodin. Rimsky-Korsakov had the Arabian Nights (Scheherazade), etc...

Personally, living the "literary life" for me means continually being surrounded by an ever-growing library (now some 3000+ books). It means that I can admit, to paraphrase J.L. Borges, that few things have happened to me and I have read a great many... or rather few things have happened to me more worth remembering than the music of England's words. It means that books have always been a central part of who I am... even as an artist. That many of the visual artists who have inspired me and continue to do so can be found in books. It means that William Blake, and the Book of Kells, and the Lindesfarne Gospels, and the Shah Nameh of Tabriz, and the Kelmscott Chaucer, and the Book of Durrow, and the Paris Psalter, and illuminated books of Koetsu and Sotasu, and the ukiyo-e prints and books of Utamaro and Hokusai are just as important to me as an artist as Rembrandt and Titian.

Certainly, there are differences. The average visual artist, for example, must have a certain degree of manual dexterity and is commonly involved in the heaviest manual labor. Contrary to the image of the effete artist, most of them are quite solid carpenters and laborers. Their art demands as much. For the most part, the visual artist is like the writer in preferring to work in solitude. This may be true of the composer as well... but the musician and the other members of the performing arts must commonly thrive upon an audience. I think that the question may not have gone far because we imagine that "living the literary life" (or the artistic life) rarely fits some stereotype. It means something different and is experienced differently by each individual writer/book lover.

[librarius_qui]

Some avant gaurde poetry borders on conceptualization, though none is really taken seriously. Though, some wacky things are coming out in recent times - things might get a little weird.

Ah, yeah, you're right ... There is weird thing in poetry! I almost always forget this (as well) weird part of literature, haha!

(Kidding. At least in a way.)

I mean, all the poems I write (that I consider) are part of narrative, and narrative themselves.

But I'm straying here.

So, what about the life of a poet. Does a poet live of what he does, or is he a common office worker like me? Or a poet during the days of college only, and after that, buries his art, "forever more"? ... (Or do they all die too young for being noted before that happened?)


:crash:

[JBI]

Ah, yeah, you're right ... There is weird thing in poetry! I almost always forget this (as well) weird part of literature, haha!

(Kidding. At least in a way.)

I mean, all the poems I write (that I consider) are part of narrative, and narrative themselves.

But I'm straying here.

So, what about the life of a poet. Does a poet live of what he does, or is he a common office worker like me? Or a poet during the days of college only, and after that, buries his art, "forever more"? ... (Or do they all die too young for being noted before that happened?)


:crash:

Who knows, many writers boarder on something in between prose and verse. Anne Carson, who I think must've been fueled by Sheila Watson (who pretty much created the concept of verse-novel in Canadian literature) would probably be the prime example. Though, Watson's Double hook is worth checking out - it is certainly authentic.

The point is though, Prose is always trying to match poetry, because it is, in the contemporary sense, merely corseted poetry. The power of literature is in the manipulation of the word, and if you write prose, your abilities are somewhat limited.

Though actually, there is a movement in post-modern poetry to mix verses with visual images.Some even have gone so far as to mix poetry with cinema, though I can't think of a very interesting example - I know, for instance, the American poet Thylias Moss has gone down that road, though, I would say her older stuff is far more interesting.

I guess though, when it comes down to it, grafting forms is certainly a good idea, and it's strange that very few people do it, though the reason is pretty easy to see. To master one art form is unbelievably difficult, yet to master two is far harder.

Still, it would be interesting to see someone build off of the graphic novel, and create something in a more literary vein. The concept is interesting, but most just read like thick comic books. I think the problem is the artists make sure the text matches the images, and is contained within the image, rather than letting the text and image conflict, or contradict, or even not be formed as speech.

Even, for instance, poetry backed by abstract art could be very interesting. But I guess such a thing would be impossible - with the poetry markets like they are, I think selling a book with colored pictures would be impossible. The printing of the books would be far more than the price people would be willing to spend anyway.

[librarius_qui]

I think quite often the lines between writer/artist/musician are blurred because they are not as far apart as they may seem. Rousseau began as a composer; E.T.A. Hoffmann started as a painter, a semi-successful composer (he still has a few pieces that are considered a minor part of the classical repertory). Eugenio Montale (who we are reading in the Poetry Group) began as a composer and singer; Theophile Gautier began as a painter. William Blake and Dante Rossetti are both admired equally as poets and visual artists... and this barely touches upon a few examples. The Japanese and Chines ideal was of the poet/painter/calligrapher. I think beyond the fact that many artists have tried their hand at one or more forms (music, poetry, painting, theater) they are quite often sensitive to other art forms... greatly enamored of other art forms... and at times directly influenced or inspired by other art forms. Degas loved the ballet, the opera, and the cabarets. The Abstract Expressionists were fueled on jazz (and alcohol). Rilke had Rodin. Rimsky-Korsakov had the Arabian Nights (Scheherazade), etc...

Personally, living the "literary life" for me means continually being surrounded by an ever-growing library (now some 3000+ books). It means that I can admit, to paraphrase J.L. Borges, that few things have happened to me and I have read a great many... or rather few things have happened to me more worth remembering than the music of England's words. It means that books have always been a central part of who I am... even as an artist. That many of the visual artists who have inspired me and continue to do so can be found in books. It means that William Blake, and the Book of Kells, and the Lindesfarne Gospels, and the Shah Nameh of Tabriz, and the Kelmscott Chaucer, and the Book of Durrow, and the Paris Psalter, and illuminated books of Koetsu and Sotasu, and the ukiyo-e prints and books of Utamaro and Hokusai are just as important to me as an artist as Rembrandt and Titian.

Certainly, there are differences. The average visual artist, for example, must have a certain degree of manual dexterity and is commonly involved in the heaviest manual labor. Contrary to the image of the effete artist, most of them are quite solid carpenters and laborers. Their art demands as much. For the most part, the visual artist is like the writer in preferring to work in solitude. This may be true of the composer as well... but the musician and the other members of the performing arts must commonly thrive upon an audience. I think that the question may not have gone far because we imagine that "living the literary life" (or the artistic life) rarely fits some stereotype. It means something different and is experienced differently by each individual writer/book lover.


Even so, 'Guild ...


-x-


And there's one other thing to be considered: there are artists who come from rich backgrounds, and artists who come from poor backgrounds. Both life origins make artists. V. VanGogh, for instance ... I'd hate to have a life like his!

Among the few people who consider themselves artists, even fewer have a 3000-book library ... Or wish to.

I don't think an artist is a bibliophile necessarily, although I agree with you that artists search and experiment on neighbour arts (writers go to music and to painting and sculpture, painters go to books -- of course! -- and to music, musicians go to literature and to science (specially physics and astronomy!) ...). And a writer, particularly, there have one of two main interests: History or daily-life. (Or both.)

Only, History is very important to a writer, because it's speech, and because literature, in its way, tries to imitate reality (to some extent, or some sorts of it) and, in order to do so, it has to make historical sense. But I'm talking about literature.

Jorge Borges the Argentinian goes a lot into mythology ... It's a way of using History, I think. Of making his ground for coherence of some sort.

Poetry not always searches for coherence, but, many times, much more for breaking it. As well as the visual arts.

Jorge Borges was a bibliophile, I can say.

I like Rembrandt, but I think that all he read in his life was the bible. If ever. (Was he before the press or after, can't recall, by memory ...) (As well as I forget his first name ... Shame on me.) And he didn't wish, I think, to have a big library, but possibly a bigger studio.

I think I mistook VanGogh for Monet ... One of these two had a miserable life! Awgh!


:crash:

[Bitterfly]

The point is though, Prose is always trying to match poetry, because it is, in the contemporary sense, merely corseted poetry. The power of literature is in the manipulation of the word, and if you write prose, your abilities are somewhat limited.

You can't make prose into some kind of frustrated poetry, even if the expression you use is very pretty! I suspect that you too often forget the importance of imagination in art: words are undeniably important in order to create an imaginative world, but so are narratives. And some prose is more concerned with telling a story, simply, or thinking- something that can be done, but in my opinion with less success, in verse. I agree that some writers are on the threshold (Lawrence, for instance) for others are prose artists through and through.


I guess though, when it comes down to it, grafting forms is certainly a good idea, and it's strange that very few people do it, though the reason is pretty easy to see. To master one art form is unbelievably difficult, yet to master two is far harder.

I'd say that opera is already a good hybrid form: music, dance, visual arts, and literature (even if the lyrics are often quite uninteresting). Didn't Wagner dream of "total art"?



So, what about the life of a poet. Does a poet live of what he does, or is he a common office worker like me? Or a poet during the days of college only, and after that, buries his art, "forever more"? ... (Or do they all die too young for being noted before that happened?)
:crash:

Lots of poets had "ordinary lives": Larkin, a librarian; Mallarmé, an English teacher... Makes one dream!

By the way, Stlukesguild, I knew and love quite a few of the examples you provided for us. Not all conceptual art is bad, of course, and as you said, the emperor's clothes tale is not always relevant. I like contemporary art that touches me, in which I can find beauty. But when I come across works that only prick my curiosity (as it happened in the Guggenheim Museum, for instance, with big tubes, I think, at the entrance), I'm a bit more sceptical. I suppose I'm still attached to a certain transcendance, maybe? I expect art to lead the way to something I could never have imagined myself, something higher than myself.

[Emil Miller]

Coming back to the original post, you can forget about laying about drinking absinthe and take a look at what real artistic endeavour requires from a writer. The following is my translation ( for what it is worth ) of a passage from `Schwere Stunde` (Difficult Hour) by Thomas Mann. The short story describes a late night hour when Schiller cannot sleep because he has a mental block in finishing his play Don Carlos.

He stood by the stove and blinked with painfully tired eyes over to his work, from which he had fled, this burden, this pressure, this torment of conscience, this fearful task that was his pride and his misery, his heaven and his damnation. It dragged itself, it marked time, it stood still again and again. The weather was to blame and his illness and his tiredness. Or was it the work itself? A joyless prison consecrated to doubt.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Coming back to the original post, you can forget about laying about drinking absinthe and take a look at what real artistic endeavour requires from a writer. The following is my translation ( for what it is worth ) of a passage from `Schwere Stunde` (Difficult Hour) by Thomas Mann. The short story describes a late night hour when Schiller cannot sleep because he has a mental block in finishing his play Don Carlos.

He stood by the stove and blinked with painfully tired eyes over to his work, from which he had fled, this burden, this pressure, this torment of conscience, this fearful task that was his pride and his misery, his heaven and his damnation. It dragged itself, it marked time, it stood still again and again. The weather was to blame and his illness and his tiredness. Or was it the work itself? A joyless prison consecrated to doubt.

No, if the literary life doesn't involve laying around, sipping absinthe with artist friends, debating the literary merits of some obscure Greek poet or pondering the value of postmodernist expressionism; then I'm out. Or I'm with Keats with the whole "if it doesn't come then it shouldn't come at all" sort of thing.

I know the reality is the real, the tiredness, the misery, but I prefer the unreality of imaginary bliss, I prefer the untrue, true, literary life.

(As I sit here trawling through Moll Flanders with a pen in one hand and a cheap glass of French red in the other, with a head fresh of insults received from the day job in the school - divine I’m sure.):)

[stlukesguild]

Among the few people who consider themselves artists, even fewer have a 3000-book library ... Or wish to.

Yes... 3000 is quite sizable... even for a writer... I will admit. But not as rare as you may imagine... at least not in this day of inexpensive books. Of my 3000 books nearly a third (perhaps a quarter) are actually accounted for by art books: monographs, art history surveys, art criticism, technical manuals, museum and gallery exhibition catalogs, etc... Such is most certainly not uncommon with most of the artists I know. I might also add... there is a painting by the American painter R.B. Kitaj entitled Unpacking My Books that has always made me laugh. As an incurable (and successful) bibliophile Kitaj accumulated a sizable library... one in which he often found himself rediscovering forgotten books only as a result of needing to pack and un-pack his library when moving. Having moved some 7 or 8 times since college this is an experience I am more than familiar with.

I don't think an artist is a bibliophile necessarily, although I agree with you that artists search and experiment on neighbour arts (writers go to music and to painting and sculpture, painters go to books -- of course! -- and to music, musicians go to literature and to science (especially physics and astronomy!) ...)...

I certainly agree. I would be hard-put to suggest that there is anything that is an absolute necessity for the artist/poet/composer/dramatist. How well read was Bach? How versed in painting was Mozart? How experienced in music was Goya? Indeed... one would not need to look that hard to find writers, or artists, or composers that were in no way experts in their own field. The scholar and the artist are not necessarily one and the same. But perhaps that points a bit toward my own ideals as the what it means to be an artist. I have long admired the Renaissance ideal of the artist/scholar that often was educated in a broad array of the arts: Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Alberti, Leonardo, etc...

I like Rembrandt, but I think that all he read in his life was the Bible. If ever.

You may be right. It certainly was the most important book... at least as far as can be seen in his art. But is reality he was quite successful early on... until the death of his first wife... and he certainly had the wherewithal to afford more books.

Was he before the press or after, can't recall, by memory ...

Well after... 1600s.

As well as I forget his first name ... Shame on me...

Rembrandt was his first name... the rest of his name was Harmenzoen van Rijn

And he didn't wish, I think, to have a big library, but possibly a bigger studio.

Perhaps... but if he were a bibliophile he might have preferred the bigger library to the bigger home/studio. I can spend far more on my library because I spend far less upon my cars.

[stlukesguild]

Still, it would be interesting to see someone build off of the graphic novel, and create something in a more literary vein. The concept is interesting, but most just read like thick comic books. I think the problem is the artists make sure the text matches the images, and is contained within the image, rather than letting the text and image conflict, or contradict, or even not be formed as speech.

Certainly the graphic novel has potential. The strongest work to now has largely been satire... R.Crumb is perhaps the strongest... coming off as "the Breughel of our time," as Robert Hughes put it.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3194/3042233287_0afc68f24e_o.jpg

Among the "serious graphic novels" one immediately thinks of Art Spiegelman's Maus

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3029/3042233317_1100674f9a_o.gif

And Ben Katchor's work:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3191/3042246351_f06a4bb92f_o.jpg

Most of the rest often seems to strike me as far stronger in terms of imagery... quite often cinemagraphic... than as literature:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3249/3042233363_5766b89283_o.jpg

This is as true of much of the Japanese anime:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3195/3043080806_e6aeae5006_o.jpg

Even, for instance, poetry backed by abstract art could be very interesting. But I guess such a thing would be impossible -

Actually such work is not only possible... but quite common. But you are of course speaking of highly limited editions for the most part: livre d'artist or "artist's books". Such highly prized books have been produced by Picasso, Matisse, Miro... and continue to be produced today. Earlier such works would include the books of Blake and William Morris' Kelmscott Chaucer.

Some exemplary examples might include Robert Motherwell's illuminations for Federico Garcia Lorca's Lament for Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (fold-out page)

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/ElegyPrintsm.jpg

Marc Chagall's Arabian Nights

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/chagsigned48.jpg

Leonard Baskin's Auguries of Innocence

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/auguries.gif

Justin Quinn's Moby Dick:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/05_58.jpg

Kenneth Patchen's Painted Poems:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/kpc07b.jpg

Tom Philip's Humument:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/h345a500.jpg

Michael Mazur's Dante:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Cant01.jpg

...with the poetry markets like they are, I think selling a book with colored pictures would be impossible. The printing of the books would be far more than the price people would be willing to spend anyway.

You are naturally assuming that such an art would need to market itself at the mass audience, when in reality it would be and is geared toward a more "elite" (in this case "wealthy") audience. The "original" of each of these books would sell like an "original painting". Taking the livre d'artist to the next logical step, we return to what is essentially the illuminated manuscript... or the hand-made, one-of-a-kind book. The unique artist's books are in no way uncommon today... and in actuality are making a great come-back as visual artist's explore the possibilities beyond the traditional painting/drawing/sculpting:

Ronald Chase: Book of Hours
http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/title-1.jpg

[Bitterfly]

Still, it would be interesting to see someone build off of the graphic novel, and create something in a more literary vein. The concept is interesting, but most just read like thick comic books. I think the problem is the artists make sure the text matches the images, and is contained within the image, rather than letting the text and image conflict, or contradict, or even not be formed as speech.

Certainly the graphic novel has potential. The strongest work to now has largely been satire... R.Crumb is perhaps the strongest... coming off as "the Breughel of our time," as Robert Hughes put it.



There are lots of what you call graphic novels coming out of France and Belgium. Even if they are called comic strips, some of them have undeniable artistic value - I'm thinking about the works of people such as Enki Bilal, or Loisel, or Johann Sfar (The rabbi's cat is excellent!), or Lewis Trondheim. Some are them are satirical, but others are incredibly poetic. Then you have lots who have taken the storyplots of great classics (Remembrance of things past, Don Quichotte, Peter Pan...) and sometimes those works are a success. I think comic strips here have nothing to do with what you call "comics" in the US (and possibly in Canada).

[Jozanny]

What does this have to do with anything? Many of the images posted seem as oportunistic to me as any commercialism luke decries, and perhaps that deserves its on thread, the commercial predation of artistic concept, but it is not on topic, to the degree that those of you debating it aren't referencing the topic.

[stlukesguild]

JoZ... The OP questioned us as to how or what we imagined living "the literary life" would be like. Some threw out some comments upon the stereotypes. I threw out my thoughts as to what leading "the literary life" meant to me as someone who is not a writer (but an artist)... but deeply enamored of books. I also threw out my notions of what living "the artist's life" meant. From this point we went through several digressions... discussions of beauty and Modernism... discussions of the differences... and the links between the arts. LitNet is a dialog and like many dialogs it meanders away from the original question of topic if not continually pushed back by moderators or the original poster. I believe a good many postings here do directly address the OP as to what living "the literary life" means to the respondent. Obviously we are, as a group, comprised of individuals with a wide array of interests and aspirations brought together by a single common love of books. What "living the literary life" means to us as a group may never result in any sort of consensus because of this broad array of personalities and personal goals. Anyway... sorry if you feel hijacked.:redface::blush::wave:

[Emil Miller]

[QUOTE=Neely;640805]

I know the reality is the real, the tiredness, the misery, but I prefer the unreality of imaginary bliss, I prefer the untrue, true, literary life.


And that`s before you`ve started on the absinthe!

[LitNetIsGreat]

I know the reality is the real, the tiredness, the misery, but I prefer the unreality of imaginary bliss, I prefer the untrue, true, literary life.


And that`s before you`ve started on the absinthe!

Ha, ha - yes I am a screwed up individual - sometimes I talk such rubbish that even I don't know what I am saying!

Back to the topic I always think that in order to live the true literary life (or the untrue, true literary life) a person has to be totally financially independent, someone who does not need to work to earn a living. Such people as artists or writers are able to live outside of the social system in some way and are allotted, therefore, some form of true individuality. I'm thinking of particular of the poets who had patrons as in Wordsworth and Coleridge or those of their own means like Byron and Shelley. It would have been very difficult for these people to write how they did if they had to contend with 50/60 hours labour a week at their particular time of living, in the harsh times of early 19th C Britain.

I am not saying that you can't be an artist with a day job, but it is a damn sight easier if you don't have to. I would also suggest that the pure artist is one who doesn't have to conform to any particular audience or public, the true artist produces for him/herself alone and is able to create what the hell they want free from outside influence.

All of this is just the stuff of "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" I suppose, Wilde again in most ways. Wilde was a fan of absinthe too of course. :D

[Jozanny]

I am not saying that you can't be an artist with a day job, but it is a damn sight easier if you don't have to. I would also suggest that the pure artist is one who doesn't have to conform to any particular audience or public, the true artist produces for him/herself alone and is able to create what the hell they want free from outside influence.

This point might be interesting to examine Neely, because it may be commonly held but not really true for writers, though Henry James and rare lucky people like Rowling are exceptions--but even in James's case, his wealth did not entirely support him in his youth. He functioned as something of a reporter and gossip columnist in England, at least til Daisy Miller became an international hit. Kafka was an insurance adjuster, and by all accounts, a good one. Faulkner and dear Fitzgerald became Hollywood script writers, which places much different demands on authors. I did serious time in social services, and produced more then, and even more as a contract reporter, than I am capable of now, and it is not writer's block holding me back today so much as major disruptions and health, at least for the time being. Most writers do hold jobs, and rarely hit the JK Rowling jackpot.

I am not an expert on the classical era, but even back then, patronage was dicey. Ovid was exiled from Rome, and it devastated the poet.

[LitNetIsGreat]

It is only natural that the vast majority of writers/artists have had to work in some way, either by selling the work or by some other means in their life – even Shakespeare had to write for an audience of course.

What I see as the purest form of artistic creation though is the ability to exist totally free from the constraints of the system. I think the wonders we have in the world, in terms of art, are here despite of the obstacles of the everyday, not because of it.

[stlukesguild]

What I see as the purest form of artistic creation though is the ability to exist totally free from the constraints of the system. I think the wonders we have in the world, in terms of art, are here despite of the obstacles of the everyday, not because of it.

There is the ideal... and there is reality. In my ideal artist's life my artwork would sell for such a high price that I might freely spend my entire days doing nothing but create art. In many ways... at least for the visual artist... this was the norm prior to the intervention of the gallery system. But with each possible life lived by the artist it would seem there come differing problems. The ideal of which you speak... being wealthy enough to be completely free from any constraints... would seem to have been realized by a scant few: Sir Walter Raleigh, Edward Spenser... but then again... their larger life as political figures surely "got in the way" of their writing. But what of the writer such as Dickens or even Stephen King whose writing is so successful? Did they have no restraints? Was there no pressure to continue writing at a certain speed, in a certain genre?

My initial "realistic ideal" was to have gone from art school to some elite graduate program to the fast-track for teaching art at the college/university level. Things did not pan out as planned. Reality intervened... and reality pointed out that the academic posts I was looking to were few and far between... lacked any of the sort of security I was seeking. And so I ended up teaching art to elementary (and now middle-school) students in some of the poorest and roughest neighborhoods in one of the poorest cities in the US. There are undoubted trade-offs. There are many days when the energy I must expend leaves me exhausted and in no way able to work in my studio. On the other hand... I am well off enough that not only do I not need to worry about where the rent is coming from, who is paying for the doctor's visit, let alone need to put of painting because I cannot afford that red paint I recently ran out of... but I am actually able to afford a large professional studio space where I am able to work as a professional... show my work professionally... think of myself as a professional:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/62-Studiosmall.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Nov2006Studiosmall.jpg

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k255/Stlukesguild/Studio3sm.jpg

I also realize that the current path I have taken certainly has had an impact upon me and my art that most certainly is different from what my ideal might have been. As a college/university teacher it is quite likely that my work would have fallen into and stayed within a far more academic mode. In other words I might have found it far easier to continue on my way as an abstract formalist. Confronted every day with children's art... with images... with art made from the most primal inspirations: the simple desire to record the world around them... the draw "things"... has all undoubtedly impacted me as an artist... for better or worse. JoZ first threw out the question about living the "literary life"? Is there really a single ideal or right approach to such?

[Emil Miller]

I know the reality is the real, the tiredness, the misery, but I prefer the unreality of imaginary bliss, I prefer the untrue, true, literary life.


And that`s before you`ve started on the absinthe!

Ha, ha - yes I am a screwed up individual - sometimes I talk such rubbish that even I don't know what I am saying!

Back to the topic I always think that in order to live the true literary life (or the untrue, true literary life) a person has to be totally financially independent, someone who does not need to work to earn a living. Such people as artists or writers are able to live outside of the social system in some way and are allotted, therefore, some form of true individuality. I'm thinking of particular of the poets who had patrons as in Wordsworth and Coleridge or those of their own means like Byron and Shelley. It would have been very difficult for these people to write how they did if they had to contend with 50/60 hours labour a week at their particular time of living, in the harsh times of early 19th C Britain.

I am not saying that you can't be an artist with a day job, but it is a damn sight easier if you don't have to. I would also suggest that the pure artist is one who doesn't have to conform to any particular audience or public, the true artist produces for him/herself alone and is able to create what the hell they want free from outside influence.

All of this is just the stuff of "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" I suppose, Wilde again in most ways. Wilde was a fan of absinthe too of course. :D

What you say about being financially independent and not having to submit to the mundane daily grind is a universally held desire and those writers, artists and composers who were patronized in the past, whether by the church or aristocracy, have produced an artistic heritage that no state subsidised system could ever match; which is only one reason why I do not support socialism. However, as you point out, since then most artists have usually had to rely on `the day job` to stay alive; and while we are unlikely to produce another Michaelangelo, Caravaggio, Hadyn, Beethoven, Byron or Shelley etc. etc. there has been some pretty good work produced in the interim. So living the artists life applies to all those who have created what is generally conceived of as art, regardless of their personal circumstances.
As for Oscar Wilde, of his many witticisms the one that appeals (or even applies) most directly to myself is that `Work is the curse of the drinking-classes.`

[LitNetIsGreat]

Love the studio Stlukes, (and the divan).

But what of the writer such as Dickens or even Stephen King whose writing is so successful? Did they have no restraints? Was there no pressure to continue writing at a certain speed, in a certain genre?

They are held back by having to produce work in a particular genre, as you say, in order to meet deadlines for the publisher. The absolute artist shouldn’t (in the most ideal of all worlds) have to think about his audience at all, neither should they have to think about meeting deadlines and writing in a pre-arrange genre for a particular publisher. Of course there are successful writers, geniuses even, but that has little to do with the absolute ideal of the best conditions for art, which is the fact that the artist should be free to express themselves without any regard to outside influences.

I also realize that the current path I have taken certainly has had an impact upon me and my art that most certainly is different from what my ideal might have been. As a college/university teacher it is quite likely that my work would have fallen into and stayed within a far more academic mode. In other words I might have found it far easier to continue on my way as an abstract formalist. Confronted every day with children's art... with images... with art made from the most primal inspirations: the simple desire to record the world around them... the draw "things"... has all undoubtedly impacted me as an artist... for better or worse. JoZ first threw out the question about living the "literary life"? Is there really a single ideal or right approach to such?

Of course we are all undoubtedly a product of our social environments, including the things we read and see, as such there is no “right approach” as everyone is unique.

[Babyguile]

Ha, 'end product'? I guess the joy of reading a book itself, and finishing it.

[librarius_qui]

JoZ first threw out the question about living the "literary life"? Is there really a single ideal or right approach to such?

Now I'm confused ... She spoke about literature, and, since the beginning, you've ... not strayed into your art, but ... Yes, of course! But a literary life certainly is a different thing from a painter's life!

It's the life of a writer. You can talk about it if you write.

If you don't write, no matter you are talking about similar things (for there is something in common between painting and writing), you aren't talking about the life related to literature.

(Unless that you like books, and that they make part of your life.)

Nice studio, by the way. Is that yours?


:crash:

[stlukesguild]

She spoke about literature, and, since the beginning, you've ... not strayed into your art, but ... Yes, of course! But a literary life certainly is a different thing from a painter's life!

The question I raised was to ask just what is the "literary life" for the person who has no plans of being a writer. Others have raised the same question. I also raised the question as to how different the "literary life" is from the "artist's life" or the "composer's life"... and while I admit differences... there are also areas of overlap. What of the "scholar's life" or the "critic's life" (as raised by JBI) are these somehow invalid?

[Jozanny]

The question I raised was to ask just what is the "literary life" for the person who has no plans of being a writer. Others have raised the same question. I also raised the question as to how different the "literary life" is from the "artist's life" or the "composer's life"... and while I admit differences... there are also areas of overlap. What of the "scholar's life" or the "critic's life" (as raised by JBI) are these somehow invalid?

I certainly never intended to invalidate other callings through the process of raising questions about mine, although I think JBI's attempt to wall off *critic* is mute, in the contemporary era. Critics are writers, they have to be--they simply engage in a genre that demands specialization with near zero chance of real monetary gain. Poets are usually professional scholars and teachers. Those that aren't, like me, have nothing to show for it but a lot of space used up in literary journals which rarely touch more than a select audience.

I receive more affirmation in writing articles or essays, which, given my incontinence and fevers and struggling in my aging spasticity, is the most I can manage these days, a few words at a time.

The crux of my problem is the reluctant belief that I am no longer relevant because of my physical disintegration, like my ex, who no longer even tries to actually live. His power chair went down a month ago and he sits below me, a defacto prisoner in his studio, watching tv, waiting for his parts to come in. (I just had a shrill argument with his egg-head self about raising his voice and advocating for himself and he doesn't care, and we are broken off and I'd still like to kill him, which should tell me something...) Mine went down last week, and I may no longer be a player in disability activism, but I can still twist arms, and will hopefully have a loner chair Monday afternoon. But can I still go to Italy? Can I still publish successfully enough to say this life is worth it?

Vassar Miller was a successful cross-over poet; she penetrated into the able-bodied lit-crit appreciation game, but one of her end of life assistants published a heart-rending article about taking a job to help her type, and things like that, at the end of her life. He appreciated who she was, but hated the job, and didn't want to be in her company more than he had to for what he was getting paid. I don't think physically healthy people actually realize how this makes real disabled individuals with ambition feel. I feel it with state paid attendants who have had no education beyond the inner city, and when my strength fails, my options seem intensely and terribly stark, with my anger strong enough to nearly make me believe in demons.

[JBI]

I think the problem is though, that the writer, from what I understand, digs into himself as a source of inspiration for his work. The critic, though also digging into himself somewhat, seems to rely more on the actual text of the work. Also, I think the life of a critic is somewhat different than the life of an artist, especially in the eyes of the public. We seem to have in our minds this fantasy notion of what an artist's life is like, but I don't think many place a critic in that group.

We have a notion of a Kunstleroman, in both fiction and in our imaginations, but I am yet to come across a book about the coming into the trade of a critic - even Johnson's Autobiography doesn't seem to go there in that sense.

[Jozanny]

I think the problem is though, that the writer, from what I understand, digs into himself as a source of inspiration for his work. The critic, though also digging into himself somewhat, seems to rely more on the actual text of the work. Also, I think the life of a critic is somewhat different than the life of an artist, especially in the eyes of the public. We seem to have in our minds this fantasy notion of what an artist's life is like, but I don't think many place a critic in that group.

We have a notion of a Kunstleroman, in both fiction and in our imaginations, but I am yet to come across a book about the coming into the trade of a critic - even Johnson's Autobiography doesn't seem to go there in that sense.

You might become the Umberto Eco of the late 21st century, for all you know;). I intuit that you have a discipline which does not fail your intelligence; mine did. I went through my first semester a virtual drunkard and made the dean's list anyway. By my senior year I was tired and wanted to get on with the business of living, so I've always been half-baked. A peasant like Pilar, with Pilar's looks too, but whose inner fire managed to get her some pleasant sexual adventures, but a Pilar with education, but education not refined enough to play in the intellectual pissing matches between The New Republic's Jewish coterie and the Harvard feminist warriors who push back against it,:idea:, a decent enough writer to keep getting published, but either not lucky or not talented enough to break through, not yet, anyway.

Your life may end up surprising you, young man.:p

[JBI]

Or not - I'm struggling with a paper on a very slippery novel, Sinclair Ross's As for me and My House, and the trouble seems unnatural. I guess in my stupidity I picked an unbelievably ambiguous text to work with, and now have to suffer for it. It's a shame that this course doesn't deal with more poets though - I can write on for ages on verse, but writing essays on novels, having to dig through them, and support everything is to big a hassle. I think my problem is that I like to deconstruct my own essays, which ends with me cutting them up, over and over again, until I finally, pulling out my hair, decide enough is enough, and write the damn thing.

Then again, I think Robertson Davies's "The Rebel Angels" gives hope - thinking on it, he seems to have written a book specifically about critics and academics, and their very interesting lives.

[Jozanny]

Well, I am cursing my memory. I wanted to recommend an interesting short work of criticism for you. It starts with an analysis of Homer and ends with the famous Macbeth soliloquy. I could swear that its non-fiction title was *The Song of Orpheus*, and I would recognize it if I saw it but haven't come up with it on the book sellers, so I cannot recommend what I cannot remember! But it was an exceedingly interesting book, merging classical respect with pyschoanalytic reassurance.

I missed my show over this, so good night, but if I come across it I'll let you know.

[stlukesguild]

JBI... I'm curious... and perhaps I should ask the same question of Petrarch's Love... just how one comes to specialize as such an age. The critic and the scholar are indeed very specialized fields of writing... yet, as JoZ suggested... fields with virtually no chance of the writer truly gaining recognition as a writer. You speak of the deconstruction... the habit of cutting up one's own work as readily as one tears up/analyzes/deconstructs the work of another. Certainly, such can prove a trap for the creative artist... an excess of self-consciousness or self-criticism can surely destroy any thoughts of originality.

[Etienne]

Certainly, such can prove a trap for the creative artist... an excess of self-consciousness or self-criticism can surely destroy any thoughts of originality.

That's a very good observation.

[JBI]

That's a very good observation.

Who knows - Nietzsche's Apollonian Dionysian seems to suggest something along those lines. Creating anything is still a very difficult thing to do, art especially. One needs to always be conscious of what is going into it, and how it will be received.

I write for my marks, and my marks depend on how well I write. Professors and teacher's assistants aren't stupid - you can't BS them and get away with it very easily. Critics, and audiences are the same.

No body likes rejection, or to be viewed as mediocre, or bellow perfect. Everyone works to achieve, or should work to achieve, the maximum. The problem is there is time, and other things - we cannot perfect anything. That's the problem - when I submit my essays, it is not because I think they are ready, or perfect, or that I have said exactly what I want to say exactly how I want to say it, but out of a time constraint. If everyone had the time to work, we would come up with very little.

That is probably why Yeats was such a good poet - he had time. He wrote two lines a day, and edited extensively. Elizabeth Bishop was the same way, if not even more meticulous. Yet the thing is, they didn't have the fear of being flat-out rejected, or of not having what to put on the table.

Creating anything that isn't generic is always a struggle. Whether critic or artist, though I think the artist has it a little worse since even if they succeed there is still the danger of economic failure, whereas the critic perhaps has more certainty.

[Etienne]

Well in the case of the work of a scholar (as opposed to the work of an artist) of course, the matter is different. I don't think that self-consciousness is bad, nor an excess of it, but that it becomes harder and harder to express one's creativity with it. Perhaps when it does come about the result is better? I don't know.

[JBI]

I guess so - I guess that is why I stopped writing verses a while back. It's a rather depressing feeling knowing that what you're writing is bad, and yet knowing that it will have to do. I just wish I could get a translation of Leopardi's Zibaldone, which is yet to be translated into English. From the clippings I've read that is perhaps the ultimate book on the subject.

[librarius_qui]

In my view, an artist (writer) creates what is important to be created, speak of what is important for humanity to know, think, change.

At least, my creative writing is ... well, I have some "stuff to sell", all right, that I won't, but that I registered, because I wished it to be out of my drawers, but I have some other things that, rather than selling, I'd like humanity to think about, concerning the times we live nowadays.

Creativity? ... It's a way of saying the things you have to say. If the things are important, they'll make a difference. For instance, I write about important (that I consider important) issues of my time, using fiction, and characters ... It's a way of saying something important. At the same time, I'm playing with narrative ... It's the funny part to me. And it's good, because it's important, it's funny, and it's about things I'd like to see happening.

My way of saying things is through narrative. I don't consider myself a poet, because all the "poetic" things I write are about myself, and usually has to do with state of mind, and affective concerns ... So, nobody has anything to do with it!

However, I have friends who ... ahm, try to say important things through poetry, and are somewhat successful. (However, hardly recognized as relevant, at this time ... And time only will tell, no matter I appreciate myself quite a lot the work of one of them.)

& I'm no critic at all!

At the moment, I only finished unimportant works, and have one important writing (the one I'd like humanity to consider ...) at half way ... Maybe I'll finish next Carnival hollidays, which are days I usually manage to stay at home, and do absolutely nothing, so I can write, and work on writing, at least for a few days.

Once I don't intend ever to live of this, I have a "common office worker life", which doesn't allow me to have more time to write. Sometimes I think with myself that it'd be interesting to have a life that allowed me to live free all the time, so that I could only write, but ... I think I'd never be able to live without working in any kind of business!

Anyway, my writing isn't meant to sell, and the ones I made for such purpose aren't good, in my own view. They're registered, I have a friend who keeps insisting on me, saying "hey, mate, I'd like to publish your stuff" -- however he doesn't wish to do it on his own, but that I pay to publish ... which is how he publishes this own writings, through his small publisher -- but, once I don't (nor want to) depend on this to live, I don't, and won't make it happen. It's registered already, so, it's public. If someone finds it, someday, and thinks "why, it's worth publishing this crazy guy's stuff!", let him do it. I'll be long dead, I believe! haha!


:crash:

[Drkshadow03]

I don't really think there is such a thing as the "literary life." There is simply just life. Literature happens to be a major part of my life. My writing also happens to be a part of my life (though, not as big a priority as I should make it), but I see it as something between a hobby, passion, and extra I choose my own hours part-time job. I would give up both literature and my writing for other parts of my life in a heartbeat.

Want to write? Then write. Want to publish? Then publish. Learn the markets. Send your stuff out. Prepare to get rejected, and maybe you'll also get published once in awhile too.

When I was selected to attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writing Workshop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarion_Workshop) one piece of advice Nancy Kress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Kress) gave us was not to have Tolstoy syndrome. Just because you can't write like Tolstoy or Faulkner or whoever doesn't mean you shouldn't be writing or that your work isn't good, that attitude can lead you to be too self-critical. I know this happens to a lot of young writers. The key is to find your voice, and your vision.

As for JBI's comments, I think there is a difference between being a critic and the average well-read person. JBI's conflation of the two in the first couple of posts is strange to me. A critic writes criticism, and presumably does it for a job (but perhaps as a hobby, etc.). The well-read reader with a passion for literature reads without necessarily writing criticism, thus they are not a critic.

As for the critical life, that isn't any more glamorous. What is it you all think critics do most of the time? Write critical analyses and essays and books all the time? Yeah, over your summer break from school and when you take sabbatical. Opine about the merits of literary works? Write op-ed pieces in newspapers about the merits or demerits of Harry Potter? Yeah, maybe if you're an Ivy League Professor you'll have that opportunity.

In reality, Professors spend much of their glamorous life literary lives grading crappy student papers and filling out an endless sea of academic paperwork. Another large chunk of your time is spent in department commitees. Tell me, besides a few seminal literary critics (Harold Bloom, Camille Paglia, Northrop Frye), how many literary critics can most of you seriously name? Keep in mind when answering that question that there are hundreds if not thousands of universities just across America alone (plus all of the world universities) all with English departments (thus multiple critics), how many of you can name a huge chunk of these critics especially once you get outside the Ivy League? In honest truth, the public doesn't really care what literary scholars have to say. Usually only other literary scholars care what other literary scholars have to say. Also, good luck finding a job. The field right now is currently saturated with Ph. D.s in Literature. For any one tenure-track job you generally have anywhere from 300-500 applicants. Of course it depends on how specialized your field is. The general rule of thumb: the more recent the literary period, the more people applying for the job. 20th century has a few hundred more applying than a 19th century, which has more than medieval, etc.

I don't mean to come off as cynical about all this, but rather I haven't heard too much talk in this thread of the practical side of the so-called "literary life."

[kasie]

I don't really think there is such a thing as the "literary life." There is simply just life...... Want to write? Then write. Want to publish? Then publish. Learn the markets. Send your stuff out. Prepare to get rejected, and maybe you'll also get published once in awhile too.... Just because you can't write like Tolstoy or Faulkner or whoever doesn't mean you shouldn't be writing or that your work isn't good, that attitude can lead you to be too self-critical......The key is to find your voice, and your vision.......

Thanks, Drkshadow, for a common sense, feet-on-the-ground reply - I can't help feeling there has been a lot of ivory tower, Romantic (with a capital R) response to the OP's question. I'd like to think I've led a kind of Literary Life - I didn't give up reading when I left full-time education, neither did I cease to use my critical faculties; I even wrote a little and had a few pieces published. It went on as part of the rest of my life, working for a living, getting married, making a home, etc, etc, so that when and if I am defined in retrospect, I hope my obituary will include the words - '....and she loved books and was unstinting in sharing that love with all who knew her...'

[JBI]

Drkshadow - I trust the naming of literary critics is rhetorical? I could name perhaps 100 off the top of my head, most still living.

[mortalterror]

Mortal - I trust the naming of literary critics is rhetorical? I could name perhaps 100 off the top of my head, most still living.

I think you mean Drkshadow03. I don't believe I've commented on this thread yet.

I'm not a hardcore academic like Drkshadow or Petrarch, and I don't have a lot of stuff published like Jozanny. However, when I do get together with my friends who have English degrees we play frisbee. We play frisbee, and video games. We talk about movies, and how we all ought to be writing more. No Hemingway I.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Aghh, there’s always someone to come along and spoil illusion and fantasy, for me the world of the imagination is so much more attractive than harsh reality – if I had wanted harsh reality I would have joined a traffic warden forum or something equally tedious. We all know the realities of the literary life, it is just that some of us care not to voice them.

(Edit: in reply to DShadow)

[stlukesguild]

I'm not a hardcore academic like Drkshadow or Petrarch, and I don't have a lot of stuff published like Jozanny. However, when I do get together with my friends who have English degrees we play frisbee. We play frisbee, and video games. We talk about movies, and how we all ought to be writing more. No Hemingway I.

"When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine." - Pablo Picasso

Yes when my fellow artist friends and I get together we talk about women... and our wives... and politics... and our jobs... and art, art, art. Seriously, I think I do quite well at keeping my efforts as an artist moving forward... but I probably should give credit where it's due: having a large rent due each month for a studio space that I share with 3 other artists I find it quite impossible to justify that expense without making every possible effort to put it to its proper use.

[Jozanny]

I don't really think there is such a thing as the "literary life." There is simply just life. Literature happens to be a major part of my life. My writing also happens to be a part of my life (though, not as big a priority as I should make it), but I see it as something between a hobby, passion, and extra I choose my own hours part-time job. I would give up both literature and my writing for other parts of my life in a heartbeat.

Want to write? Then write. Want to publish? Then publish. Learn the markets. Send your stuff out. Prepare to get rejected, and maybe you'll also get published once in awhile too.

When I was selected to attend the Clarion Science Fiction Writing Workshop (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarion_Workshop) one piece of advice Nancy Kress (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Kress) gave us was not to have Tolstoy syndrome. Just because you can't write like Tolstoy or Faulkner or whoever doesn't mean you shouldn't be writing or that your work isn't good, that attitude can lead you to be too self-critical. I know this happens to a lot of young writers. The key is to find your voice, and your vision.

Despite the ongoing dismal implosion of my middle age, even though I know whatcha mean Drk, I disagree to the extent that there are events, episodes, that draw writers and artistic persons together, like the Bloomsbury group, aside and apart from the business of freelancing itself.

I don't know how many of this episodes truly did anything for me in a spiritual-imprint sort of way, other than my obsession with the Irish Shakespearean. There was Alexandra, who did me a lot of promotional favors in terms of getting me noticed as a creative force in Philadelphia, but she's dead. There was my click @ Poets & Writers, but that's dead, even if I stop taking it personally and blindly start giving the organization money again, sometimes what you had can't be rebuilt.

I don't know how much work I will physically be able to do between now and February, since my Quickie is dead too, and it is going to be quite a piss in the pot until I have the evaluation done and the new model in, and with all this I don't know how much I trust my uncle and his pull with Mainline Medical if I chose to give him the bid. But the service coordinator who gave me a loan power chair that I can barely use made my day when she blithely dropped the news that my former co-worker died this week. Quite a shock, as she was the nice one who truly offered me the only empathy I was going to get when her boss who was my ex-boss did a classic number on me.:lol:

This wasn't news I needed this afternoon, which is why I hate service coordinators.

I am no longer sure how to have faith in my own strength for renewal. I am getting too old for this.

[JBI]

I think you mean Drkshadow03. I don't believe I've commented on this thread yet.

Yeah, was confused by the identical post-count.

[JBI]

Everyone who reads is somewhat a critic. The title critic though is just reserved for people who get paid for it, and do it in a more scholarly manner.

[librarius_qui]

I don't really think there is such a thing as the "literary life." There is simply just life. Literature happens to be a major part of my life. My writing also happens to be a part of my life (though, not as big a priority as I should make it), but I see it as something between a hobby, passion, and extra I choose my own hours part-time job. I would give up both literature and my writing for other parts of my life in a heartbeat.

Want to write? Then write. Want to publish? Then publish. Learn the markets. Send your stuff out. Prepare to get rejected, and maybe you'll also get published once in awhile too.



You know? ... It's definitely NOT a hobby! So, perhaps you aren't a writer. You're something else, and maybe, in the future, because of some literary production, you'll (by others) be considered a writer, but writing for a writer ISN'T a hobby. It's his profession in life.





"When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine." - Pablo Picasso

Yes when my fellow artist friends and I get together we talk about women... and our wives... and politics... and our jobs... and art, art, art. Seriously, I think I do quite well at keeping my efforts as an artist moving forward... but I probably should give credit where it's due: having a large rent due each month for a studio space that I share with 3 other artists I find it quite impossible to justify that expense without making every possible effort to put it to its proper use.

I quite ... understand the similarities between a painter and a writer, 'Guild, but the question did not ask about an artist's life, but about a literary life. It doesn't ask about a writer's life either, so, each one of us here are pulling it to his own side, and experience. Therefore, maybe a critic and a journalist will have more voice here than a painter ... (?) I don't know. But painting, and visual arts, even being (as much as any other art) art, don't have that lot to do with the life related to literature, because literature involves writing.

I love your comments, though. They're very genuine, as an artist's view. A professional one's.



I am curious as to what "living the literary life" means to members who might care, or do care, about living it themselves. I have some thoughts on this I will return to later, but I am curious as to what the regulars, or even the not so regulars, think about this aspect towards creativity and end product.

Anyone?

"I'm curious on what living a literary life means" ... So am I.

At this point, I think that anyone who READS (even newspaper chronicles!) lives a literary life! ...

But honestly, I've taken the question more to those who produce literature (as a profession).

So, when I see writers, I see professors (John LeCarré, Ronald Tolkien), I see common office workers (Joaquim Machado de Assis, Cesario Verde), I see journalists (Luis Fernando Verissimo), and I see critics (who are journalists, in a way ... let me quote Umberto Eco, Jorge Borges, Jose Saramago), and I see ... opportunists (Paulo Coelho, J. K. Rowling ...). Besides people from rich families, who could live of doing nothing, and happened to have an inclination to writing (like, maybe, Jorge Amado).

Polititians who wrote/write, usually consider their other career more important than writing ... Some didn't consider writing a career at all, but a pastime, and history made them writers, because they simply wrote meaningful stuff (to a generation, to humanity), during their life. (Hemingway ... And maybe Jorge Amado.)

And there are the theatre guys, who ... possibly thought that their lives weren't only about writing, but that writing was a part of their art. This also happens with some poets. Most of these don't make any difference between the arts, but consider all of them a whole and single thing. Not my case, 'cause I'm neither in theatre, nor in poetry. I write, and that's all. (What I consider art, and work, in my life, is the writing part, even though I do produce some visual arts, and some music, but I have to say that I have no skill in these. They're mere plaything ... hobby. Not professional part of my life. However I don't live of this, writing is my profession. I have more than one profession. Main are bookman (the one I live from, or take money out of) & writer. And I'm also a Classicist, informally studying to consider myself a philologist, someday ...)

I don't think a person who loves books would be counted in this "literary life", once everyone (average "civilized" (. . .)* human being) reads, and likes well doing it.

(*Please, take note on the spaced dots to the word in quotation marks. Possibly that's another discussion.)


:crash:

[kasie]

"I'm curious on what living a literary life means" ... So am I.

At this point, I think that anyone who READS (even newspaper chronicles!) lives a literary life! ...

But honestly, I've taken the question more to those who produce literature (as a profession).....

I don't think a person who loves books would be counted in this "literary life", once everyone (average "civilized" (. . .)* human being) reads, and likes well doing it.

(*Please, take note on the spaced dots to the word in quotation marks. Possibly that's another discussion.)


:crash:

I think you've come the closest yet to replying to the OP's question, lib qu, TT or whoever you are today :).

However, don't forget that producers also need consumers! The readers are an essential part of a Literary Life. If you you write for publication, then your readers become part of your literary life, don't they?

And perhaps it is unwise to assume that because people can read they actually enjoy doing so or know how to do it properly (ie critically) - as you say, a possible new thread!

(I didn't know John le Carre was a professor, I thought he was a sometime teacher/Civil Servant in the Foreign Office?)

[Tallon]

One could also wonder if they were living a life that could be made into literature. I definitely am not so far :D.

[LitNetIsGreat]

One could also wonder if they were living a life that could be made into literature. I definitely am not so far :D.

Which brings us full circle to Wilde. :D

[Jozanny]

You know? ... It's definitely NOT a hobby! So, perhaps you aren't a writer. You're something else, and maybe, in the future, because of some literary production, you'll (by others) be considered a writer, but writing for a writer ISN'T a hobby. It's his profession in life.

Yes and no librarius. Few, in the modern era, get to make writing a profession. When I started submitting poetry in university, I was in a different place than when I started earning money as a freelancer in 1999, just as I am in a different place today. Writing is a hobby for many fools; it is a mission for even fewer fools who are willing to pay the cost to be the real thing, which doesn't mean that Drkshadow isn't a real writer. He's young, number one, and being young takes time, becoming sure of your voice, your footing, your genre. I'd say the same about JBI, that maybe he boxes himself in with his notions of a critic's role.


One could also wonder if they were living a life that could be made into literature. I definitely am not so far :D.

Any life can be made into literature. I have recently been thinking about turning my bowel accidents into a dark comedy, and some writers are actually facile in the scatological mode. Pynchon, for instance, in that famous passage in Gravity's Rainbow, where Slothrop journeys through a toilet bowl, or the new movie, Slumdog Millionaire, which is being praised left and right for the hope and optimism it inspires with its main character covered in feces frow a sewer.:p There isn't a moment, instance, event, or episode which doesn't have a conceptual framework to offer, in the right hands, with the right vision.

[Drkshadow03]

[QUOTE=Jozanny;643021]Yes and no librarius. Few, in the modern era, get to make writing a profession. When I started submitting poetry in university, I was in a different place than when I started earning money as a freelancer in 1999, just as I am in a different place today. Writing is a hobby for many fools; it is a mission for even fewer fools who are willing to pay the cost to be the real thing, which doesn't mean that Drkshadow isn't a real writer. He's young, number one, and being young takes time, becoming sure of your voice, your footing, your genre. I'd say the same about JBI, that maybe he boxes himself in with his notions of a critic's role.

Listen everyone, I'm trying not to get in the usual stressful back and forths around here because I've been sick with mono and I'm only now just recovering somewhat (hence why I really haven't posted in the last couple of weeks). But I also thought I would share a couple of thoughts on what I think is an interesting topic.

If you read the statement I made in its original context, libarius, I said I consider my writing something in between a hobby, another job, and a passion. NOT ONLY a hobby. Writing is a lot of work. Having a genuine writing career is a lot of work. Until I have an actual career, it's still fundamentally a hobby as far as I'm concerned in all practical senses of the word. Keep in mind I have had my fiction, poetry, criticism, and non-fiction published and have even been paid for it, but selling a few pieces to small press markets that most people have never heard of for peanuts does not a writing career make.

Jozanny is correct about everything she just said. I also had to put the fiction writing aside for Grad School, which was playing into my comments a bit.

[stlukesguild]

I wouldn't want to suggest that only those who make writing (or whatever art) their profession... their source of income... can be thought of as living the "literary life". That would immediately negate Walter Raleigh and Edmund Spenser and Dante and T.S. Eliot and just about anyone else who did not earn their keep through writing... and while living from one's labor as a writer may be the ideal, it also may not be reality for many, and to suggest otherwise... to suggest that one approach to the "literary life" is superior to another may itself be rather insulting. Turning to Sir Walter Raleigh... or even Christopher Marlowe... or Michel de Montaigne.... one suspects that to call writing something of a "hobby" for them (or something between a hobby a job and a passion) may not have been far from the mark... yet how many here have achieved something of equal literary merit? Again... my argument has been for the notion that what we call the "literary life" is different for each of us.

[Jozanny]

The word I was looking for earlier, in my reply to librarius, was vocation.

Writing can be both, a vocation and a profession. The same can be said of art; luke might be surprised to learn my mother went to art school and caught some critical attention, but she never applied herself, and as I'm her daughter, I have the same issues with discipline, as even in my current state of prisoner in this hated studio, I should be readusting, tying my submission deadlines around Tim's laid back pacing, so he can mail my hard copy, as needed, or until I learn how not to kill myself getting into this huge Jazzy loaner. I am a little miffed because I was already to go for the Boa Poetry Book Prize when my chair died last week, and sending it now would be too close to the deadline, so I have to void the check, package my manuscript now for a later date and try to get Tim to obey me without upsetting him, as he is the only idiot I have to help me right now (indeed, he pushed back on Monday, telling me he wasn't retarded, but I'll believe that when the trains run on time)...:D:D:D

Drk, sorry to hear about the mono. Your astute points have been missed; feel better.

[librarius_qui]

my argument has been for the notion that what we call the "literary life" is different for each of us.


the "literary life" is different


different

Difference.

This is a key word, in my understanding, to an artist. An artist is different from all others. Even from his masters.

I agree with you, 'Guild. I have been speaking what the literary life is ... to me. This is a rather interesting & clever remark by you!

Thanks for bringing it to us :thumbs_up


:crash:

[Jozanny]

I just got an email from my poet friend Robert Thomas, and I thought I'd mention it because he wrote me because he saw my posts here at LitNet.:rolleyes: I was immediately embarrassed, and told him this isn't Speakeasy, but I stay for the debates, and that if he does register, he'd have to put up with me. Whether that is Sche and Logos gain, can't say. He's normal, affable and kind, to my bitterness, emotional pain and distemper, and yet he's fond of me, and I actually enjoy his poetry.

But what goes around comes, as they say...