11.21.2006

If I had Wordpress I'd categorize this under "Rogue Intellectual"

I do believe I said I was going to go to war with some classics. In the order that I originally mentioned

Behold, Guernica.


I know it's tres chic in some circles to call Picasso a hack, and in fact he is probably responsible on some level for the decor of the new federal courthouse in Boston, which consists of an array of wood panels dipped in different colors of paint, hung on the wall, and was commissioned for five hundred thousand taxpayer dollars. This represents an entirely untapped money laundering technique that should be given some thought. If I was curator of an art museum, my first exhibit would be a collection of works each of whose dollar value exceeded my budget, replicated by a grade school student. I would then spend the entire budget on one painting, and bid patrons to correctly identify the real work. The next exhibit, assuming I hadn't been fired yet, would just be bare walls defaced in random and nonsensical ways by artists.

Where was I? Ah yes

I don't roll with the heavy-handed Picasso-haters as the guy has done some things that I appreciate. The ridiculous metal sculpture thing in Chicago isn't one of them, and neither is Guernica. It was intended to capture the horrors of war. The pain. The suffering. The chaos.

When I look at Guernica I share in the pain and suffering. But war is the last thing on my mind. Honestly it has me weighing whether getting catapaulted back in time to the London blitz would be a better way to spend an afternoon.

And his treatise of those two exposed busoms is a sad sight for all lovers of lady chests.

Even if you dissect all of the imagery, you're still stuck with an ugly painting.

Yes, Pablo. War is ugly. We've all known that for ages. Are you done?

When I announced my intentions in my last post Jason said, "Feel free to rip Milton at anytime. Required readings of Paradise Lost should be considered corporal punishment."

And I could very easily just let that remark stand. Two hard drive crashes ago I had a college term paper I could have pulled out on how Milton is dreadful that got an A in my lit class (luckily the prof was a Joyce kind of guy). The point of the matter is that Milton was either too busy with his head up his ass trying to justify the actions of God to Man to realize that he was nowhere near equal to the task of conveying through his words a real sense of what Eden was, and what a terrible thing it was for it to be destroyed, or he didn't care that he was ostensibly balking at one of the greatest challenges a writer could take up. Or maybe he was giving it his all. In either case he seemed to be coming up with as many ways as he could to tell you that the place was beautiful, but it seemed like a thesaurus entry in verse. (ask me about Don Quixote some time) My mind instantly wanders to Vesper and {illyria}, who have each taken me where Milton couldn't on a number of occasions. As a side note it is impossible for me to identify with Milton, who as a Puritan would likely envision paradise as being in part a world without those two.

And he didn't justify the actions of God to Man either. The Devil sends a snake to Eve and she and Adam eat a piece of fruit that God said to lay off of and that's why the world kind of sucks. Yes I know he was working with limited source material and yes I know it was a tall order but if I said in the beginning of a book I wrote that my words would cause you to have an orgasm and said so in earnest then you would have every right to call me a douchebag when my work failed to deliver.

And Milton was, quite thoroughly, a douchebag. He wrote a memorial for Shakespeare while admiring him was still acceptable and proceeded to align himselves with the people who banished theater from England. He spent about thirty years writing Puritan propaganda. Blind and impovirished, he sold the publishing rights to Paradise Lost for ten pounds. I don't really need to say it, do I?

As for Vivaldi, let's just say that one day he wrote a piece that was insufferably pleasant, only suitable to listen to while in an art museum or while sipping tea in the garden on a bright spring day wearing one's best attire watching children chase butterflies. Then he wrote the same piece over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and...

I've enjoyed his music exactly once. Since then I can't bear to hear it

Hmmm... yes I believe that's what I said I'd deliver. Anything else anyone would like me to address?

Mahalo

11 comments:

  1. I like Picasso... he was an interesting character and his journey can be seen in his work... but we were both raised in Málaga and desperately needed out so...

    We make legends of mere mortals and in time, the reasons why become blurred and, like ship, we follow the flock, ooh and aahing away at shit... glad to see you see past that.

    I, for one, will declare here that I hate, HATE, PASSIONATELY HATE, the movie Casablanca... it is shit... and I am not ashamed to admit it even though doing so back in the tenth grade did not put me in my teacher's good graces but I simply could not fake it... and neither did I want to...

    ... yep, nonsequiturs are my thing but I think you get my drift with all this random rambling of mine, no? ;-)

    Hope all is well with you amigo mio!

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  2. Anonymous7:16 PM

    After reading MIzB's comment, I totally lost what I was going to say

    I don't like John Lennon. Yes, I like much of his music--not all at all, I didn't like his persona, his second wife, the great bed-in and much else

    I tried selling an article on my dislike for him--and got great responses "I secretly don't like him either but can never let the world know..." Totally great rejections.

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  3. Anonymous1:04 AM

    I too like Picasso but he was much more studied about his art than it would see and I don't dislike Vivaldi but I spent a lot time around art gallery's at one time so maybe that is why. ;0



    The only thing I can say is I dislike Elvis Presley, think Andrea Dworkin was insane,

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  4. As I said before, I do actually like Picasso for the most part. He can hardly be held responsible for what came in his wake.

    Miz B: And very often the mystique is something I go for as well. But as you said, at some point the bullshit needs to be exhumed

    I've never actually seen Casablanca so you haven't trodden on any toes here. I've been meaning to, though.

    Pia: John Lennon was a well-meaning man, I think, who accidentally allowed himself to become an out of touch douchebag. At the very least I appreciate him for getting a hair up J Edgar Hoover's ass. That there's still a building named after that fascist scumbag is something that continues to puzzle me. In any case he's one of my favorite songwriters of all time.

    Cooper: I meant to say "art galleries featuring paintings by Monet" but for some reason I didn't

    I keep forgetting if it's hipster suicide to shit on rockabilly, but yeah I'm not an Elvis fan. As much as the attempts to de-sexy his songs amuse me.

    Porn=rape? uh... yeah. batshit.

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  5. LOL LOL LOL

    What a fantastic way to kickstart my evening. We need more examining of whether the emperor wears clothes or not.

    My literature degree competely ignored Milton, I'm glad to say.

    I love Pablo, though, not everything, but I have a woman with a penis for a forehead at the top of my stairs (women think of dick all the time, is that it, Pablo?) Pity my children!

    However I hate that he was allowed to get away with being shit because he could hide behind the label genius. Just admit it, you're an insensitive lover and greedy and let's move on. Let's not affirm society's standards yet refuse to comply, SMASH something. Don't justify your behaviour through the work you produce. (Unless I'm allowed to misbehave in the name of the blog).

    Couldn't stand the queue for the Picasso museum in Barcelona though. The length of it alone was quite artistically valid.

    I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to visit the Museum of Modern Esoteric Wombatitude. But I do spend a lot of time trying to see the good in kids' art. And failing oftentimes :-(

    Don't get Elvis either.

    The pre-Raphaelites (sp?) are too nice.

    And Mozart is just twiddly and IRRITATING.

    Thank you.

    (and now I get the word veri sqitko, which is pretty much how I feel!)

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  6. I mean nice as an insult, just to be clear about that. Nice is easy, lazy and palatable for people without taste. That's what!

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  7. YES! Don't get me started on classical music! I can stand very few songs but to sit and listen to the shit? SHOOT ME!!! Lovebroy tried making me listen to it when pregnant... that lasted about 5 minutes... I get bored out of my mind and wanna shoot myself... and it truly gives me splitting migraines... Loveroy thinks I lie but too much classical music and I am passed out in pain, I kid you not!

    Blach!

    I only like that Elives reminds me of my late brother because he liked Elvis... not my cup of tea though...

    As for John Lennon, I wrote a post about it way back when and was shocked to see so much agreement on the subject matter... I wasn't too impressed by his love story with yoko... they broke up at one point and she sent her assistant to fuck him and she did and HE did and then Yoko wanted him back and sent for him and he came back... THAT is love? Yeah, over my dead body would i send someone over for my man to screw and if he screwed anyone at all and wanted to come back to me? P-SHAW! HELL NO! Not impressed at all...

    And being in Spain well... hah! Imagine how unpopular I am here... Lil' B came home yesterday with this thing she had to fucking memorize about how they are supposed to OBEY and RESPECT ALL ELDERS, TEACHERS and ADULTS... I allowed her to memorize it as a class assignment but not without fully explaining that such a thought is bullshit and that she must not buy into that, that adults are dangerous and teachers do not know everything and if something does not make sense to her she should not be afraid to protest it and to never forget that I have her back, that these people are of no consequence and that she comes first... damn bastards sending brainwashing propaganda bullshit home with kids! So yeah, her teacher is not too happy with me as no other parent does that and the only student who talks back and protests things is my girl... WAY TO GO I SAY! And so yeah...

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  8. Mimey: The emperor's tailor has been deposed, and summarily executed

    Misbehaving in the name of anything is more fun if you don't have permission, don't you think?

    Mozart has a few pieces I enjoy, but I can't listen to him for very long.

    Miz B: I like a lot of classical guitar, Bach, and Beethoven. Much of the rest of it is, indeed, tepid.

    Speaking of classical guitar, and Bach...

    Anyways, classic rock has the same benefeits that classical supposedly has on prenatal minds, or so I've been led to believe.

    teaching your kid to stick it to The Man at such an early age?

    Have I mentioned how much I love Bohemians?

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  9. for starters, i tried to like milton. i really did. (remember that chat?) but i can't, even if i drowned myself in a concoction. you lose the beauty of milton's thought in his hifalutin attempt to elevate an already very lofty premise.

    picasso takes no shit from me, though. i don't bow to kiss his feet, but he knew how to package his art, which is more than i can say for milton.

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  10. (sound of my chair scraping the floor as i push it back while standing to my feet and clapping)
    so many times lately, i've asked for what i thought were incredibly simple things...and despite being told it would be done, it hasn't been.
    you said you would do it. you did.
    and you did it well.
    bravo.

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  11. {illyria}: I do, in fact. Hmm... You've pretty much rendered my entire bit on Milton unecessary with that sentence because that pretty much says it all.

    True. It should be well noted that Picasso is not the prime offender here.

    Anna: When I read your comment on the last post I knew that I had to do it ASAP. Had the feeling it was something you'd appreciate. Glad you liked it

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