Gosh people please. Every artist is a scam artist, that's what art is. One that isn't is a shaman, mystic, prophet, or something, whatever. jeez louise.
Look, it may well be that Picasso set about a new style every time sales started to dwindle. But the way it usually works, if you want to look into it, is that an artist's established, exhibited, recognized, chatted up stuff outsells the new, and usually after the artist sold it already. What kind of seer do you suppose someone is to think that they could embark on a style with knowledge that it will sell? Did Matisse know when he abandoned a cozy career as an impressionist that--what? was there a help-wanted sign for a fauvist somewhere? Yes, it all makes sense. Picasso is a formula artist because he could work convincingly in many mediums and was restless and inventive. Yes, there you go.

Formula schmormula. Adolph Gotlieb painted the same abstract arrangement his entire notable career, and I love the stupid things.

    This all reminds me of the rumour in the early 20th century that they were closing the patent office because everything had been invented. I guess they would know, probably had a list, check things off as they come in. Steam drill, check. Anybody got the mousetrap yet? Yes, someone did that, 1916 some company in Philedelphia I think.

One fair criticism I read a while back was that women in Picasso are always either sexy objects or bitchy monsters. It seems to hold up, especially in regard to his mistress/model stuff. But wait--those big lumpy Picasso women that I love--which are they? The two running with weird heavy grace on the beach, which? The big lumpy girl in the concrete dress, 1920. Do I want to hump her or dump her? These seem to me to have no subject or quality relating to the criticism. That's the thing with criticism, it's hard to find anything very good.

   I get a little less interested in art every damn day, all the tiring nonsense all around it. Fame, money, celebrity--these things aren't art, really. A popularity contest probably IS a popularity contest, like it or not. Historians like the artists who illustrate their conception of the period, that's all. They like Leonardo's Last Supper, which is my least of him. What do I care about the perspective blah blah blah. I like the Virgin and St. Anne, and Mona. For modern, guess what? Not Bouguereau. There's no mystery in it, even though he's a fantastic painter.

   Who's in the school books. Well, if you want to be in the literary anthologies your best bet is to be named William, or Williams, or even William Carlos Williams. Somebody ought to start a strident incoherent nutso web-site to correct this grossly unfair injustice. Somebody named Tim, maybe. Yeah. Tims don't get a lot of historical recognition.

   I suppose if I felt that Tito Jackson was a genius, or that Pete Best was the soul of the Beatles, or if I came down with that French thing for Jerry Lewis, the regular dumbass workings of cultural notoriety might seem to me a dire conspiracy, lies, and propaganda.

   I don't grudge you an opinion John, and I don't need your resume'. No offence taken, you're merely mistaken about my smug dismissal. My door remains open to W. B., whose paintings I always enjoy. I need help with their depth, and in the future I won't go to Fred Ross for clues. The only critic who repulses me more is Clement Greenberg. I hated them about equally by reading them, though Greenberg is far brighter, but word is that Greenberg also crossed a line of decency from which I allow no return. Another critic, Nicholas Fox Weber, of Yale, with his Freudian/Geraldo Rivera expose' type crap is running about neck and neck with Ross, with his--whatever. There's not one crumb of fresh observation or insight in Ross's stinky b.s. and if he thinks he's going to argue and bully me into seeing stylistic depth, get off it, I'll argue his punky fool head off. No, I won't I'm too tired of it all.

John you know as well as I that the point of an investment isn't what you paid (the lower the better) but what you oh fuck it, who cares. I don't begrudge the commercial for what he likes, I just think it sucks. There's a book by Guy Davenport that argues Balthus is the greatest master of the 20th century which is pretty absurd but it's a great book full of appreciative observations and positive insights. (That the figures have a marionette quality, you can almost see the strings, that's GOOD. That's sharp.) By the way the late famous writer John Gardner (Grendel) wrote that Davenport was the most original fiction writer in America. Ever heard of him? Fame is not art, that's all. John Banvard painted here in Louisville a century back and was the richest most famous artist of his day and nobody knows who he is, he's not in the books and there might be one fragment of one of his paintings somewhere in South Dakota. Actually he's in a book called Banvard's Folly by Paul Collins who is my new favorite writer.

The thing that they taught me in art school was that it was interesting how Bouguereau painted mythical subjects with an Nth degree of clarity and reality. In Paul Collin's recent book about autism Not Even Wrong which I'd like to plug in passing he mentions that his wife is working on a painting of mermaids watching t.v. What are they watching? Judge Judy. I'd like to see that, too.

I like Bougr. but don't "get" them below the stunning surface, and frankly, I got better help in, of all places, art school. I'll try to find the book which discussed a revival of interest in him among super-realists, back in '85. Nobody taught me he was bad. There's no unified code in art schools, generally, just people teaching what they know. They still teach life drawing, and if you want trad. techniques you just have to find someone who knows them. They're around. But if you want a school to tell you there are two styles, naturalism and impressionism, regular and spearmint, you need to look up Fred Ross @ Artnazibonehead.com. When I first read that stuff it pissed me off utterly, but when I turned down the volume on my bullshit detector it turned out to be really funny. So funny I'm thinking of parodying that sort of rhetoric in a play I'm trying to finish. I'm rooting instead for Robert Kincaid, the Christmas tin type painter. At least he sounds like a nice guy.

Edward Hopper's technique is worse than my own, but I can explain why I like and admire him, hold him above me and 'better' painters, another time. I'd like to talk about stuff I like, if I can shake this frustrated feeling. Please forgive my rant about it.