It’s well summarised in the oft misrepresented Frost poem: *I shall be telling this with a sigh* *Somewhere ages and ages hence:* *Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—* *I took the one less traveled by,* *And that has made all the difference.*
The first line is generally omitted, practically reversing the meaning of the poem and proving his point. I do additionally object to devaluing an artistic work because it is done for money. The story of the artist depressed and in poverty has so consumed our collective psyche we expect artist to not be paid for their time. We see this in the piracy of movies and music or in the promise of working for “exposure”. The current art world is its own awful mix of capitalism gone mad and exclusionary barriers of entry and so I can’t defend its excesses either. I guess I have to remain stuck in the middle and confused. It doesn’t help that Banksy recently both sold a piece at a record price, and then destroyed it before the sale leading to the question of whether the destroyed piece is worth more or less now! On Fri, Oct 12, 2018 at 3:48 PM Manu Bhardwaj <[email protected]> wrote: > On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 11:59 PM Srini RamaKrishnan <[email protected]> > wrote: > > When I didn't know as much about these things, I would be struck by some > > experiences, unable to explain them logically. Many years ago I was in > > Amsterdam, and I used to spend hours in front of a single painting by Van > > Gogh, and mere minutes in front of the works of Rembrandt. I couldn't > tell > > you exactly why then, but it was clear to me that Van Gogh put his heart > > into his paintings. Now Rembrandt was not a bad painter by any means, but > > he didn't care about his work like Van Gogh, he did care, very much, > about > > being successful. This intuition I learned much later was true when I > read > > his life history, he liked to make money off his paintings, and so cared > > about customer satisfaction. Van Gogh died in poverty. > > > I'm uncomfortable with this. If you had ended up doing the opposite, you > might then either have > - forgotten about the incident altogether, or > - rationalized it with an entirely different story > in order to make it consistent with the presence of some innate sixth sense > or feeling. > > If I were not able to explain something logically, I would conclude only > that the logic was beyond my cognitive ability. > > Manu > -- Cheerio, Ashim D’Silva Design & build www.therandomlines.com instagram.com/randomlies
