tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post7554794022129466072..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: The Failed ArtistUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-16808259488862972502012-01-10T01:37:42.203-08:002012-01-10T01:37:42.203-08:00Robb,
This was the little fellow's "lost...Robb,<br /><br />This was the little fellow's "lost year". Whatever was happening inside him -- and the only real witness to all this is an extremely dubious one, the character I call "the intermediary" -- seems to have contributed to whatever it was that later happened inside him that eventually helped enable him to... blow everybody's mind..<br /><br />Susan,<br /><br />I think that's just the point, the blandness, the ordinariness, the mediocrity, the repression. The medium of art exposed all these things. A few years later he changed media -- going on to the "bigger canvas", the social group, which is so much easier to manipulate than art, and which not only tolerates but celebrates and encourages the miserable common denominator ("human nature") in any two-bit megalomaniac with a score to settle. He got even with art by destroying untold millions of lives. And in the long run his sick little two-bit geist got to have its cake and eat it too, because his paintings are now "worth" amounts of money it would depress you to know. <br /><br />Of course the "collector" is a life form that dwells just beneath the pond scum of the earth, and will doubtless survive the extinction of all other life forms, including even th'innumerable termite.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-41254688692270637362012-01-09T19:58:15.515-08:002012-01-09T19:58:15.515-08:00Can't see much in the paintings as clues excep...Can't see much in the paintings as clues except the roses look a little wilted so why paint them? A sign of some sort? I don't see any monsters but the bland.Susan Kay Andersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16277139119869470939noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-51631622140333399002012-01-09T08:38:54.708-08:002012-01-09T08:38:54.708-08:00Blew my mind with the Hitler credit at the end. Bu...Blew my mind with the Hitler credit at the end. Bucco, sir! Bucco!Robbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12312524900784740898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-24587996005240151872012-01-09T05:52:33.062-08:002012-01-09T05:52:33.062-08:00Thanks very much Aditya -- perhaps to understand t...Thanks very much Aditya -- perhaps to understand the true nature of the failed artist, one must have a special personal affinity.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-73240074676352904142012-01-09T05:47:07.367-08:002012-01-09T05:47:07.367-08:00An astonishing piece of writing Tom. Bravo!An astonishing piece of writing Tom. Bravo!adityahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16078144194220301083noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-38874520481060876202012-01-09T05:36:37.972-08:002012-01-09T05:36:37.972-08:00That fellow's poetry was definitely for the bi...That fellow's poetry was definitely <a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/joseph-stalin-morning.html" rel="nofollow">for the birds</a>!TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-91503777687610585952012-01-08T22:52:05.777-08:002012-01-08T22:52:05.777-08:00Intriguing to say the least--meanwhile, another no...Intriguing to say the least--meanwhile, another not-so-failed artist was <a href="http://rt.com/news/prime-time/could-stalin-have-been-poet-instead-of-tyrant/" rel="nofollow">trying his hand at poetry</a>!vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras)https://www.blogger.com/profile/14515165428574974933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-9746141750026237522012-01-08T09:26:42.125-08:002012-01-08T09:26:42.125-08:00Amazingly interesting and not easily "solved&...Amazingly interesting and not easily "solved" or dismissed. No -- they're not the greatest works of art I've ever seen, but the great failing lies outside of these efforts, obviously. As for the historian's art appraisals, isn't the operative showbiz expression: "Everyone's a Critic." This morning, while watching the "final" (please, God) Republican candidates debate on Meet The Press (Mother -- please make it stop), our local Philadelphia tv station ran ads for a series of "Starving Artists Art Sales" taking place at local suburban hotels. Makes you think. CurtisACravanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00315707533118640284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-58243672192716561802012-01-08T08:44:13.121-08:002012-01-08T08:44:13.121-08:00Elmo,
The down-and-out period represented here ta...Elmo,<br /><br />The down-and-out period represented here takes place in 1909/1910, with the real bottoming-out occurring that winter. He continued to daub away in Vienna (where the "action" here unfolds) until 1913, when he goes to Munich, and manages to sell his paintings on his own, for enough money to provide a modest living. The pictures shown here come from several different periods. He continued to dabble long after his dreams of being a great artist had been shattered. <br /><br />Later his work became collectible. for not so good reasons. At one point Dr. Jack Kevorkian had assembled a nice little collection.<br /><br />From a Washington Post piece:<br /><br />'Hitler was 18 when he applied to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, planning to make his life as an artist. He flunked the drawing test and was rejected. He later wrote in Mein Kampf, "That gentleman [the rector] assured me that the drawings I had submitted incontrovertibly showed my unfitness for painting." Hitler's ability lay instead in architecture, the rector told the young man. By 1910 the 20-year-old Hitler was working in Vienna as a draftsman and painter of watercolors. William Shirer wrote in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich that Hitler "sold hundreds of these pitiful pieces" to "petty traders to ornament a wall, to dealers who used them to fill empty picture frames on display and to furniture makers who sometimes tacked them to the backs of cheap sofas and chairs after a fashion in Vienna in those days."<br /><br />'Hitler's biographers generally give short shrift to the dictator's years as a failing artist. Alan Bullock's classic, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, concludes that the future Fuehrer produced "entirely unoriginal drawings" and "grandiose plans." "He had the artist's temperament without either talent, training or creative energy."<br /><br />'In Hitler: The Path to Power, Charles Bracelen Flood writes that "Hitler had a flair for drawing; filling the apartment at 31 Humboldtstrasse with his sketches, he dreamed of becoming a great painter." But for most historians, the only moment that matters in Hitler's artistic career is the art school rejection. The key text is from Hitler friend August Kubizek, who wrote that after receiving the rejection, Hitler launched into a tirade in which "his face was livid, the mouth quite small, the lips almost white. But the eyes glittered. There was something sinister about them. As if all the hate of which he was capable lay in those glowing eyes . . . Hitler never ceased to feel ashamed of what his dream of being a painter had become."<br /><br />'In 1935, Hitler ordered the Nazi Party to find and obtain as many of his paintings as possible. Many were purchased from German citizens for prices of about two years' average salary for a German worker. The assembled pictures were stored in underground bunkers.'TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-30971260012574629282012-01-08T08:14:47.988-08:002012-01-08T08:14:47.988-08:00Were these before or after
World War I and Hitler&...Were these before or after<br />World War I and Hitler's<br />experience with trench warfare?Elmo St. Rosehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01588245143022651357noreply@blogger.com