Gino Severino the Italian Futurist wrote in 1946
‘ It cannot even be said that peace has come after the war……few people…have faith in their fellow man…ill-will and superficiality are so widespread…that disbelief in men seems justified and the truth is so twisted by private interests that one can hardly believe in truth….’
Plato, that man of words who dreamed of an ideal society had no use for poets or artists. Banning them from Utopia was high on his social agenda.
After a century of experiment in the visual arts, the dogged landscape tradition, far from giving up the ghost, is still as strong as ever.
I’d be the first to admit to my ambivalence about both fame and the art market.
Maybe that’s the clue. Invent your own label. None of this vacillating between modes, methods and materials but an easily identifiable label, preferably one word, that would fit neatly on your gravestone
I also read this week of a Ghanaian artist who went from selling his paintings for $100 a pop on the streets of Accra to selling for sums in excess of $600,000 on the streets of New York. Lucky him. Let’s hope his sense of humour is in place when he passes his use-by date in a year’s time and Larry Gagosian moves on to his next big discovery. After all, you’re worth a lot more dead than alive. Ask Basquiat, who died at just the right time. Now that is a joke.