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ART_AGAINST_ART
December 29, 2005
"The Wheeler Dealers" includes
a minor character that's working A mid-60s
the abstract art racket. James Garner. A small bit
from the novel:
"Look, if you're going Texas oilman,
to walk around on my just arrived
canvas, you could at in New York
least put some paint for refinancing,
on your shoes." reaches into
his closet the
One of our hero's side projects is to next morning,
put over abstract art as a speculative and considers
investment. wearing one
of his Brooks
In one scene he's making a Brothers
statment to the art press knock-offs.
but he's having trouble
remembering his lines: the He says to himself
artist dude plays charades "No. Never play
behind the critics to prompt the other fellow's
him: game", and puts
on his cowboy
"Uh --" outfit again.
Holds nose, puffs out
cheeks, drops down
"I believe in
emersing myself..."
(Updates: May 8, 2019)
A very early film, probably one
of the first talkies, I'm going I saw this one at the
to guess 1931 ("Girl without a Stanford Theater some It turns out that
Room" from 1933): years ago, but I had a it was just the
hard time finding deceptive title
information about it that hid it from
A young artist goes online. me-- it's certainly
to Paris to work on commercial, but it
his craft, and falls had me wondering
in with a bunch if I was staring
preaching the Modern into one of the
Art gospel-- web's blindspots.
The leader of this clique The actor resembled
shows off his Great Painting Ray Walston, but this
"The Whistle": a close-up was years if not
cubist rendition of a decades too early.
whistle, with a sort of (Charles Ruggles!
whooshing look to it. The big game hunter
He goes off into a musical from "Bringing up
number, singing "Don't paint Baby" among many other
the whistle, paint the things.)
blow!"
The young artist is struck one
night by the way the room looks
spinning around him when he's He comments that working on it
drunk... he sets out to attempt is expensive, because he has to
a painting of this: a radially keep getting drunk to do it.
symmetric design with a
spinning look to it, which he
calls "The Wheel of Life".
Eventually, his work appears in
competition, and is quite well
recieved by the judges... but
the artist jumps up and throws
a fit, he's angry because they're
exhibiting it upside down.
A fight ensues, and later
he looks back on this all
with reget...
But actually, this art riot gets a lot of
press, and it turns out he sells the
painting for quite a bit of money to
someone who doesn't care at all about the
painting, but is convinced it's a great
investement because of the publicity.
(April 3, 2018)
And third, consider "The Horse's Mouth" (1958):
This one is a peculiar pick because it has
Alec Guiness in it and it's actually a good movie
(redundant, I know)--
Alec Guiness plays a crazed painter who breaks into
someone's house while they're away because he
really likes one of the walls-- he needs to paint
a mural there.
A friend of his is an even crazier sculptor who
decides to horn in on this scene, he has a large
block of marble lowered into the house on a crane--
it's too heavy for the floor, and crashes down into
the basement, so he decides to work on it there.
While they're working on their seperate
projects the sculptor is uncertain about how
his art is going and keeps chipping away at
the stone, trying to fix it. He keeps bugging
the Alex Guiness character for advice:
Guiness reluctantly comes over and
looks down through the hole in the
floor at the sculpture.
Sculptor: (anxiously) How does it look?
Guiness: (tired) Smaller.
WEAK_REEDS
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