Is Pop Culture Killing modern Art ?

Philosopher David Novitz has argued that disagreement about the definition of art are rarely the heart of the problem. Rather, “the passionate concerns and interests that humans vest in their social life” are “so much a part of all classificatory disputes about art” (Novitz, 1996). According to Novitz, classificatory disputes are more often disputes about societal values and where society is trying to go than they are about theory proper. For example, when the Daily Mail criticized Hirst’s and Emin’s work by arguing “For 1,000 years art has been one of our great civilizing forces. Today, pickled sheep and soiled beds threaten to make barbarians of us all” they are not advancing a definition or theory about art, but questioning the value of Hirst’s and Emin’s work. In 1998, Arthur Danto, suggested a thought experiment showing that “the status of an artifact as work of art results from the ideas a culture applies to it, rather than its inherent physical or perceptible qualities. Cultural interpretation (an art theory of some kind) is therefore constitutive of an object’s arthood.”

$Damien Hirst’s 66ft sculpture of a naked pregnant woman will remain in the seaside town of Ilfracombe in Devon for 20 years. The statue of the woman – named Verity – holding aloft a sword and standing on a base of legal books is meant to be a “modern allegory of truth and justice.”$

Damien Hirst’s 66ft sculpture of a naked pregnant woman will remain in the seaside town of Ilfracombe in Devon for 20 years. The statue of the woman – named Verity – holding aloft a sword and standing on a base of legal books is meant to be a “modern allegory of truth and justice.”

A famous American culture critic has announced he is quitting the world of art as he claims it has become obsessed with celebrities and money.

Dave Hickey attacks the contemporary arts scene saying anyone who has ‘read a Batman comic’ can make a career for themselves in art.

The professor and author condemns the ‘tourist mentality’ of the industry, complaining it has led to well-known artists being overestimated.

The 71-year-old arts and culture critic said it has become ‘calcified, self-reverential and a hostage to rich collectors who have no respect for what they are doing’.

‘Art editors and critics – people like me – have become a courtier class,’ he told The Observer.

‘All we do is wander around the palace and advise very rich people. It’s not worth my time.’

‘If I go to London, everyone wants to talk about Damien Hirst. I’m just not interested in him. Never have been.’

Mr Hickey said the emergence of arts consultants has led to collectors buying what they have been told is great art, instead of forming their own opinion. excerpt by Sara Malm for the Daily Mail

Is the emperor naked or not ? We selected some of the comments regarding Mr. Hickey statements

He is so right. I sit on a museum board and it’s distressing how many talented artists, young and old, can’t get representation or make a living wage because galleries are obsessed with either the old and proven or the new and shocking. Art is all about marketing now. And collectors are generally looking for two things: “trophy” pieces by big names and the chance to make an obscene profit selling them at Christies in five years time.

- Sphinx, East Coast, United States, 29/10/2012 13:11

Tom Stoppard got it right when he said: ‘Imagination without skill gives us modern art.’ I wish someone in Ilfracombe would either put a dress on Verity (or even better) steal her and melt her down for scrap.

- Bluebell, Durham, 29/10/2012 14:43

Alas Mr. Hickey, you are a voice in the wilderness. Turn your head through 360degrees and it will always point in the direction of money making money in the art world. The auction houses, the business men, the investments funds are purveyors, purchasers and drivers of value, first. The fact that they can express some knowlege of provence and history is no more than might be expected of any business’expert’ brought in to manage a business – his primary concern is to get the business to make money, by which he makes his money, and that means hype, exposure and promotion, whatever the product. If the message is strong, the commercial sheep will follow. A never-ending tale.

- ronbow, neath, 29/10/2012 12:01

Just an observation, but the only cogent point of this whole article is the hinting at the cyclical nature of art. This generation will breed an avant garde artists who will seek to break the mold and transform art in ways we won’t appreciate until its too late. – Rachel, York, 29/10/2012 11:07 Tosh !

- Alfie Noakes, Stories Of The north, 29/10/2012 11:53

It’s Emperor’s new clothes, only the pretentious rich fools invest in conceptual art. The likes of Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin and their galleries are laughing behind their customers backs. Talent requires no explanation. When you see it, you’ll know it.

- Him, Over there, 29/10/2012 9:54

He is so right but it is not just art, it seems to apply to everything in society where the stupid and gullible are so easily manipulated and readily parted from their money, anything by Hirst or Emin I would not even wish to display in my garden shed, prentious rubbish fawned over by idiots.

- richiefannee, Woking, United Kingdom, 29/10/2012 8:59

How right he is. Tracey Emin’s unmade bed must have been one of the biggest jokes of the art world. There must be zillions of those around the world every morning. The funniest thing about is is that when a cleaning lady tidied it all up and made the bed Tracey Emin was able to ‘recreate’ her work or art in next to no time. That says it all really doesn’t it.

- Me and Himself, Somewhereland, 29/10/2012 8:56

I hate how when it popped into Hirst’s inflated head to preserve a shark in formaldehyde, he put an advert out and in no time some brainless cowboy had hunted a shark for him. When the preservation process didn’t work properly, another advert went out and hey-ho another shark was caught and butchered. I endorse every word David Hickey says. Loved the last comment about the art world now resembling the stifling, narrow-minded Paris salon of the 19th century. We need a new movement, led by David Hickey, to break away a la the impressionists and endorse art for its INTRINSIC qualities – with checks on whether any animal – whether a cow or a fly – has been killed in the process and whether children would have nightmares. Google “the institutional theory of art” which is debated in philosophy: when art becomes about money and status at the expense of vision and skill and expression.

- new reality, east anglia, 29/10/2012 8:44

I love Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin etc. I also love the classical paintings. It’s just moving with the times. I think the art is in the controversy and the concept. – missy , Essex, Uk, 29/10/2012 07:15 Couldn’t disagree more. Art is part skill and accomplishment, and part communication, using media to provide insight. Modern art is part shock value, and part celebrity guff. They attempt to prove that there can be insight without accomplishment, and as such they lack any credibility. Like when somebody has just demonstrated they are fantastically bad at something, and then try and convince you that the something has no purpose or value – or that doing something badly is somehow clever or ironic. It’s the emperor’s new clothes – and finally the little boy has said what most of us have been thinking for 20 years or more.

- Realist, At the end of tolerance, 29/10/2012 7:40

The nature of art is subjective, relates to your perspective and can be perplexing at times; need I say any more?

- josh, Kent UK, 29/10/2012 1:40

It’s not just the rich is it though. People keep buying prints on canvas from high street chains, Ikea and Argos. Paying ridiculous amounts for prints that have been produced tens of thousands of times. A piece of art is for generations to enjoy. It lasts more than a couple of years, it lasts longer than you are planning to live. It frustrates me to see that the general population almost never buys an original piece of art. £200 – £500 is not a big ask from an artist considering the countless hours spent producing the piece. Never mind the countless hours getting to that level. POP culture is killing the art world. Start using your brains people.

- pyrite, York, United Kingdom, 29/10/2012 1:15

Who can bear any longer to look at the gurning stupid visages of Hirst and Emin? They exploited the post punk ethos to trick their way into the art world and always look to me like grown up children astounded that they got to steal all the presents and keep them. That Emin votes conservative says all you need to know about the level of narcissism and selfishness we are dealing with here. These artists display the worst traits of Thatchers children; obscene opportunism, a rather gloating projected vanity and at the core of it all: a large helping of nothing that they managed to sell to a herd of fawning pseudo intellectual cattle.

- Paolo, london, 28/10/2012 23:12

Although I do agree contemporary art has become too celebrity obsessed, I rather like much of Hirst’s work personally. Most of it is very much about the fragility of life, a memento mori, as is the Ilfracombe statue. We may not like to be reminded of that, but it[‘s a legitimate role for an artist. For those who say contemporary artists are line managers, you have to realise that every stroke of the great frescoes of the past was usually NOT painted by one person. Prints produced by great painters are actually produced by a team of technicians. It takes an orchestra to play Mozart, a mass of people to produce “Christopher Wren’s” St Paul’s cathedral. Art is’t always one person making one painting.

- Hughie, Hong Kong, 28/10/2012 22:26

Look,there is so much looted money out there that has to be laundered,by buying so called modern art you can say you paid whatever price you like to make up.These so called works of art do not have to be valued by anyone,they just have to have a name attached,like hirst or emin.Like the kings new clothes you do not have to prove their value,or merit.

- charlie, herts, 28/10/2012 21:32

As in

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-19883351

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2224413/Art-critic-quits-modern-art-self-reverential-industry-focused-celebrities-money.html

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/damien-hirst-verity-statue-of-pregnant-1368090

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art#Controversies

Dutton, Denis Tribal Art in Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, edited by Michael Kelly (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

Danto, Arthur. “Artifact and Art.” In Art/Artifact, edited by Susan Vogel. New York, 1988.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/visualarts/article3601517.ece

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19881524

Why David Bowie Will never Die

Why David Bowie Will never die

There are not many artists that can afford to be themselves in a mystical silence these days. Or ever. Most succumb as they pretend to be the latest fashion, falling under the rules of marketing and making it all about profit and numbers. There is nothing wrong in looking for profit but there is a huge compromise in that. When an artist exclusive intention is to reinvent himself according to the flavor of the moment or surviving with stunts (to be the moment bubble gum) just to feel relevant some is gone or had never been there.

The balance between what an artist His and the market wants is the ball of fire that extinguish the “fake art” for “true art”. For the matter let’s define as fake art all bubble gum artsy marketing procedures to dissimulate lack of talent- at the expense of the best money can buy ( yes, talent of others for the effect).

As for true art let’s just put it plain and simple( avoiding 1000000 pages of discussion) is the one that sets the trends! The kind of art as relevant today as the day it appeared. . .Timeless and effortless. Sometimes artwork even more important now than in the day it was done. Great minds and talents are always missed from what they actually are and not for what others in a specific moment expected from them. Why ? Maybe because one of the mechanics of desire is the unconscious mind. And if you play with it you can give the impression that you actually need something even when what you actually miss is a sense of what once was. And sometimes even that is not necessarily pleasant. It’s like Proust’s madeleine. In In Search of Lost Time (also known as Remembrance of Things Past), author Marcel Proust uses madeleines to contrast involuntary memory with voluntary memory. The latter designates memories retrieved by “intelligence,” that is, memories produced by putting conscious effort into remembering events, people, and places. Proust’s narrator laments that such memories are inevitably partial, and do not bear the “essence” of the past.

When we think of Bowie, we know for a fact he is the one who bend all the rules by simply saying: I am a product of myself, therefore I am Bowie. And in between he created Ziggy Stardust, the narcissistic artist that had to die with is ego soon after being more famous than David Bowie. And Mr. Bowie kept moving on with the same mystic of something long gone and forever missed. That’s how it all started. Making love with his ego we couldn’t expect more than the one who actually don’t pretend to be more than himself.

On that craziness for being relevant in the media Bowie, again in the 90′s decided to do it his way again and became the first artist to be in the stock market. As he became more and more the shadow of his former self he made it clear that once he was he will always be. And detached himself from the ever so inflatable runners looking to forever be “the next new thing”.

Bowie knows perfectly well how marketing is a deadly machine of fake art and runs numbers on empty, so he protected his career all this years with the dignity of a king who respect their servants and never conceiving on explore what he once was in order to be relevant. Has in all, there will ever be artists that set the example and fake art that makes the numbers. When both come together simultaneously few, very few artists could endure and a lot perished.

Of course Bowie fully understood the concept of being the “chameleon” as the press use to call him. But for a man that insisted on being himself more than anyone else it’s remarkable to notice how we have all changed and still miss Mr. Bowie for what he is.

As the world rejoiced at the return of David Bowie last week, the man himself chose to spend his 66th birthday at The Cloisters museum and gardens in New York. Wandering around the medieval treasures in northern Manhattan, it was a typical move for someone with nothing left to prove who wanted to let his lyrics and video speak for him.

“David spent the day off the grid,” Tony Oursler, who directed Where Are We Now? told The Independent on Sunday. “He emailed me at the end of the day to see how things were going and I replied asking ‘where are we now?’ and he told me. That’s David.”

The video went to number one in iTunes charts in 17 countries and has already been seen by more than three million people on YouTube, Littered with references to Bowie’s past and shot at Oursler’s studio in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the video would not look out of place at the Turner Prize, which is no surprise given the creative engines behind it. PAUL GALLAGHER for The Independent

Building Plans: Henrik Ibsen’s in four places (4 plays and a very early poem)

This is the latest piece of Ibsen’s verse that has been given to the world; but one of his earliest poems—first printed in 1858—was also, in some sort, a prelude to The Master Builder. Of this a literal translation may suffice. It is called,

BUILDING-PLANS

 I remember as clearly as if it had been to-day the evening when, in the paper, I saw my first poem in print. There I sat in my den, and, with long-drawn puffs, I smoked and I dreamed in blissful self-complacency. "I will build a cloud-castle. It shall shine all over the North. It shall have two wings: one little and one great. The great wing shall shelter a deathless poet; the little wing shall serve as a young girl's bower." The plan seemed to me nobly harmonious; but as time went on it fell into confusion. When the master grew reasonable, the castle turned utterly crazy; the great wing became too little, the little wing fell to ruin.

Eilif Peterssen, 1895

Henrik Ibsen (1828 – 1906) was a major 19th century Norwegian playwright, theater director, and poet. He is often referred to as “the father” of modern theater and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theater. His plays were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theater was required to model strict mores of family life and propriety. Ibsen’s work examined the realities that lay behind many façades, revealing much that was disquieting to many contemporaries. It utilized a critical eye and free inquiry into the conditions of life and issues of morality. Ibsen is often ranked as one of the truly great playwrights in the European tradition. Many consider him the greatest playwright since Shakespeare.

Hedda Gabler

ACT FIRST.

A spacious, handsome, and tastefully furnished drawing room,
decorated in dark colours. In the back, a wide doorway with
curtains drawn back, leading into a smaller room decorated
in the same style as the drawing-room. In the right-hand
wall of the front room, a folding door leading out to the
hall. In the opposite wall, on the left, a glass door, also
with curtains drawn back. Through the panes can be seen
part of a verandah outside, and trees covered with autumn
foliage. An oval table, with a cover on it, and surrounded
by chairs, stands well forward. In front, by the wall on
the right, a wide stove of dark porcelain, a high-backed
arm-chair, a cushioned foot-rest, and two footstools. A
settee, with a small round table in front of it, fills the
upper right-hand corner. In front, on the left, a little
way from the wall, a sofa. Further back than the glass
door, a piano. On either side of the doorway at the back
a whatnot with terra-cotta and majolica ornaments.–
Against the back wall of the inner room a sofa, with a
table, and one or two chairs. Over the sofa hangs the
portrait of a handsome elderly man in a General’s uniform.
Over the table a hanging lamp, with an opal glass shade.–A
number of bouquets are arranged about the drawing-room, in
vases and glasses. Others lie upon the tables. The floors
in both rooms are covered with thick carpets.–Morning light.
The sun shines in through the glass door.

in Hedda Gabler, Henrik Ibsen, 1890

A DOLL’S HOUSE

ACT I

[SCENE.--A room furnished comfortably and tastefully, but not extravagantly. At the back, a door to the right leads to the entrance-hall, another to the left leads to Helmer's study. Between the doors stands a piano. In the middle of the left-hand wall is a door, and beyond it a window. Near the window are a round table, arm-chairs and a small sofa. In the right-hand wall, at the farther end, another door; and on the same side, nearer the footlights, a stove, two easy chairs and a rocking-chair; between the stove and the door, a small table. Engravings on the walls; a cabinet with china and other small objects; a small book-case with well-bound books. The floors are carpeted, and a fire burns in the stove.

It is winter. A bell rings in the hall; shortly afterwards the door is heard to open. Enter NORA, humming a tune and in high spirits. She is in outdoor dress and carries a number of parcels; these she lays on the table to the right. She leaves the outer door open after her, and through it is seen a PORTER who is carrying a Christmas Tree and a basket, which he gives to the MAID who has opened the door.]

in A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen, 1879

AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE

ACT I

(SCENE.—DR. STOCKMANN’S sitting-room. It is evening. The room is plainly but neatly appointed and furnished. In the right-hand wall are two doors; the farther leads out to the hall, the nearer to the doctor’s study. In the left-hand wall, opposite the door leading to the hall, is a door leading to the other rooms occupied by the family. In the middle of the same wall stands the stove, and, further forward, a couch with a looking-glass hanging over it and an oval table in front of it. On the table, a lighted lamp, with a lampshade. At the back of the room, an open door leads to the dining-room. BILLING is seen sitting at the dining table, on which a lamp is burning. He has a napkin tucked under his chin, and MRS. STOCKMANN is standing by the table handing him a large plate-full of roast beef. The other places at the table are empty, and the table somewhat in disorder, evidently a meal having recently been finished.)

in An Enemy of the people, Henrik Ibsen, 1882

GHOSTS

ACT FIRST.

[A spacious garden-room, with one door to the left, and two doors to the right. In the middle of the room a round table, with chairs about it. On the table lie books, periodicals, and newspapers. In the foreground to the left a window, and by it a small sofa, with a worktable in front of it. In the background, the room is continued into a somewhat narrower conservatory, the walls of which are formed by large panes of glass. In the right-hand wall of the conservatory is a door leading down into the garden. Through the glass wall a gloomy fjord landscape is faintly visible, veiled by steady rain.]

in Ghosts, Henrik Ibsen, 1881

THE MASTER BUILDER

ACT FIRST.

A plainly-furnished work-room in the house of HALVARD SOLNESS. Folding doors on the left lead out to the hall. On the right is the door leading to the inner rooms of the house. At the back is an open door into the draughtsmen’s office. In front, on the left, a desk with books, papers and writing materials. Further back than the folding door, a stove. In the right- hand corner, a sofa, a table, and one or two chairs. On the table a water-bottle and glass. A smaller table, with a rocking-chair and arm-chair, in front on the right. Lighted lamps, with shades, on the table in the draughtmen’s office, on the table in the corner, and on the desk.

in The Masterbuilder, Henrik Ibsen, 1892

BIO

Born: March 20, 1828
Skien, Norway
Died: May 23, 1906
Christiania, Norway
Norwegian playwright

The Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen made a tremendous impact on the course of Western drama. The best of his plays portray the real-life problems of individuals, with a skillful use of dialogue (conversation between individuals in a play) and symbols.

Early life

Henrik Ibsen was born on March 20, 1828, in Skien, Norway. His father was a successful merchant. When Ibsen was eight, his father’s business failed, which was a shattering blow to the family. Ibsen left home at age fifteen and spent six years as a pharmacist’s (one who prepares and sells drugs that are ordered by doctors) assistant in Grimstad, Norway, where he wrote his first play. In 1850 he moved to Christiania (Oslo), Norway, to study. In 1851 he became assistant stage manager of a new theater in Bergen, Norway, where part of his job was to write one new play a year. Although these plays were mostly unsuccessful, Ibsen gained valuable theater experience.

Ibsen returned to Christiania in 1857, where he spent the worst period of his life. His plays either failed or were rejected, and he went into debt. He left Norway in 1864, spending the next twenty-seven years in Italy and Germany. He changed his appearance, his habits, and even his handwriting. He became distant, secretive, and desperate to protect himself from the real and imagined hostility of others.

Early plays

The main character in Catiline (1850), Ibsen’s first play, is torn between two women who represent conflicting forces in himself. Ibsen’s other early plays show him struggling to find his voice. The two plays he wrote during his second stay in Christiania were more successful: Love’s Comedy (1862), which pokes fun at romantic love, and The Pretenders (1864), a historical and psychological (relating to the mind) tragedy (a serious drama that usually ends with the hero’s death).

In the first ten years after leaving Norway Ibsen wrote four plays, including the immensely successful Brand (1866), about a man’s attempt to understand himself. His next play, Peer Gynt (1867), made Ibsen Scandinavia’s most discussed dramatist. Peer Gynt is Brand’s opposite, a man who ignores his problems until he loses everything, including himself. Ibsen called Emperor and Galilean (1873), a ten-act play, “a world-historical drama.”

Plays about current issues

Inspired by the demands of critics that literature should address current problems of the day, Ibsen set out to develop a dramatic form in which serious matters could be dealt with using stories about everyday life. Ibsen did not invent the realistic (based on real life) or social reform play, but he perfected the form. In doing so he became the most famous dramatist of the nineteenth century. Still, Ibsen

Henrik Ibsen.

As used by George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), a great supporter of Ibsen’s work, the term “Ibsenite” describes a play that exposes individual and social hypocrisy (pretending to be what one is not). Examples are Pillars of Society (1877) and A Doll’s House (1879), which point out how the conventions of society hinder personal development. In Ghosts (1881), however, the character of Mrs. Alving discovers that there are forces within the individual more destructive than the “dollhouse” of marriage and society. The last of the “Ibsenite” plays, An Enemy of the People (1882), is one of Ibsen’s finest comedies.

Later works

After 1882 Ibsen concentrated more on the problems of the individual. The Wild Duck (1884) shows how the average man needs illusions (unreal and misleading thoughts or ideas) to survive and what happens to a family when it is forced to face the truth. In Rosmersholm (1886) a man raised in a tradition of Christian duty and sacrifice tries to break with his past. Hedda Gabler (1890) is the story of an unhappy woman who attempts to interfere with the lives of others. There is much of Ibsen, as he saw himself at the time, in Hedda Gabler.

Many of Ibsen’s last plays represent confessions of his sins. The Master Builder (1892), one of Ibsen’s most beautiful dramas, is the story of an artist consumed by guilt over the wife and children he has “murdered” to further his ambition. John Gabriel Borkman (1896) is a study of a man who sacrifices everything to his vision and is killed by the forces in nature he has sought to control. Ibsen’s last play, When We Dead Awaken (1899), is an artist’s confession of his failure as a man and of his doubts about his achievement. Soon after this play Ibsen suffered a stroke that ended his career. He died on May 23, 1906, in Christiania.

For More Information

Ferguson, Robert. Henrik Ibsen: A New Biography. London: R. Cohen, 1996.

Gosse, Edmund. Henrik Ibsen. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911. Reprint, Norwood, PA: Norwood Editions, 1978.

Ibsen, Henrik. The Correspondence of Henrik Ibsen. Edited by Mary Morrison. New York: Haskell House, 1970.

Jorgenson, Theodore. Henrik Ibsen: A Study in Art and Personality. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978.

Free ebook here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4093/4093-h/4093-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2542/2542-h/2542-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2446/2446-h/2446-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4070/4070-h/4070-h.htm

As in :

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/theatreblog/2012/jul/16/henrik-ibsen-a-dolls-house

http://wps.ablongman.com/long_kennedy_lfpd_9/22/5820/1489997.cw/index.html

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4093/4093-h/4093-h.htm

http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/hibsen/bl-hibsen-hedda-1.htm

http://www.notablebiographies.com/Ho-Jo/Ibsen-Henrik.html#b

The Death of Thomas Chatterton by Keits, Shelley, Coleridge and Wordsworth

This painting shows the dead body of Thomas Chatterton, an 18th century poet who killed himself by taking arsenic rather than live in poverty.

I suspect that if you weren’t familiar with this picture you wouldn’t guess that it shows an impoverished young man who has died of self administered arsenic poisoning. Although relatively unknown during his life, Chatterton’s death became a well known event because of the romanticised reaction it provoked. As well as this painting, there were poetic responses from the likes of Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats.

When Want and cold Neglect had chill’d thy soul,
Athirst for Death I see thee drench the bowl!
Thy corpse of many a livid hue
On the bare ground I view,
Whilst various passions all my mind engage;
Now is my breast distended with a sigh,
And now a flash of Rage
Darts through the tear, that glistens in my eye

(Monody on the death of Chatterton by Samuel Taylor Coleridge See link)

Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) was an unsuccessful poet whose suicide became a symbol of blighted artistic genius. Wallis used his friend George Meredith (1828-1909), also a struggling writer, as the model. Recent research has questioned whether Chatterton was living in poverty and if his death was suicide or accident (Nick Groom, 2004).

When the large painting of this subject was first exhibited as ‘Chatterton’ at the Royal Academy, Wallis added a quote from Christopher Marlowe: ‘ Cut is the branch that might have grown straight, And burned is Appollo’s laurel bough’. A label on the verso of this painted version reads: The Death of Chatteton/ the original painting/ Study by H Wallis/-’The Marvellous Boy/ The sleepless soul, that perished in his pride’/ Wordsworth.

I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul that perished in his pride;
Of him who walked in glory and in joy
Following his plough, along the mountain side:
By our own spirits are we deified:
We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.

William Wordsworth (1770–1850), British poet. Resolution and Independence (l. 43–49). . .

The Poems; Vol. 1 [William Wordsworth]. John O. Hayden, ed. (1977, repr. 1990) Penguin Books.

Sonnet to Chatterton ( John Keats)

O CHATTERTON! how very sad thy fate!
Dear child of sorrow – son of misery!
How soon the film of death obscur’d that eye,
Whence Genius mildly flash’d, and high debate.
How soon that voice, majestic and elate,
Melted in dying numbers! Oh! how nigh
Was night to thy fair morning. Thou didst die
A half-blown flow’ret which cold blasts amate.
But this is past: thou art among the stars
Of highest Heaven: to the rolling spheres
Thou sweetly singest: naught thy hymning mars,
Above the ingrate world and human fears.
On earth the good man base detraction bars
From thy fair name, and waters it with tears.

Posthumous and fugitive Poems
[Read the biographical context]

As in:

http://blogs.bcu.ac.uk/mentalhealth/2009/06/09/a-question-of-suicide/

http://www.bmagic.org.uk/objects/1918P43

http://quotes.dictionary.com/i_thought_of_chatterton_the_marvellous_boy_the

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Chatterton

http://www.john-keats.com/gedichte/sonnet_to_chatterton.htm

William Faulkner on art, life and the Nobel prize speech

“The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” WF

Life is not interested in good and evil. Don Quixote was constantly choosing between good and evil, but then he was choosing in his dream state. He was mad. He entered reality only when he was so busy trying to cope with people that he had no time to distinguish between good and evil. Since people exist only in life, they must devote their time simply to being alive. Life is motion, and motion is concerned with what makes man move—which is ambition, power, pleasure. What time a man can devote to morality, he must take by force from the motion of which he is a part. He is compelled to make choices between good and evil sooner or later, because moral conscience demands that from him in order that he can live with himself tomorrow. His moral conscience is the curse he had to accept from the gods in order to gain from them the right to dream.

(W.Faulkner)

- Could you explain more what you mean by motion in relation to the artist?

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass. (W.Faulkner)

William Faulkner (1897-1962) was born in New Albany, Mississippi. As a boy, his family moved to Oxford, Miss., the little town that became the setting for much of his beloved fiction.

He created endearing characters in classic works such as; The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, Sanctuary, These Thirteen (short stories) and Light in August.

Faulkner was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature, during a time of worldwide fear over the possibility of atomic warfare.

In this acceptance speech, he addresses those fears as they might impact young writers and reminds them of their duty:

I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work — life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand where I am standing.

Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: When will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed — love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.

Until he learns these things, he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.

William Faulkner – December 10, 1950

Wiliam Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

William Faulkner reads his speech accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature, which he was awarded in 1949. At the time this speech was given, the world had just emerged from the chaos of the Second World War, and the threat of atomic annihilation hung over humanity. Faulkner’s faith in the human spirit, as expressed in this speech, rejects in his way the horrors of the preceding decade.

“The Speech” .au file (2.1 Mb), .gsm file (0.4 Mb), .ra file (0.2 Mb)

As in

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4954/the-art-of-fiction-no-12-william-faulkner, interviewed by the Paris Review, in 1956

http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/faulkner.htm

http://town.hall.org/radio/HarperAudio/080294_harp_ITH.html

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1949/faulkner-speech.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/12/plantation-diary-inspiration-faulkner-novels

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William Faulkner on art, life and the Nobel prize speech

“The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” WF

(W.Faulkner)

Wiliam Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

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Plays about current issues

Later works

For More Information

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“The poet’s voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.” WF

(W.Faulkner)

Wiliam Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech

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