BS: What fills you with despair?

Subject: RE: BS: What fills you with despair?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 09:07 AM

I'm not McG - but thanks for reply.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: What fills you with despair?
From: Bobert
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 09:00 AM

Here's the best part about the crazy prices people pay for art... They have that kind of money to throw away... That is the despairing aspect, McG... I mean, the wealthy, be it in the US, the UK, Eqypt or, yes, even Greece, are drowning in cash...

Also despairing is that artists are the one's benefiting... I recall a story about Robert Rauschenberg attending an auction where one of his paintings was going to be sold by someone who had purchased it years earlier thru a gallery... First of all, when artists sell their work thru a gallery the gallery generally gets a big piece of the price, like in the 40% range... So the artist ain't like getting rich... Anyway, I don't recall the exact amount that this Rauschenburg painting brought but it was big money...

After the auction, Rauschenburg went up to the buyer and said, "Geee, if you wanted to spend that kind of money on one of my pieces I wished you'd just come to me..."

Yes, that is despairing... Most artist's never see enough money for them to do it as a full time job no matter how good they are... Once they die then it's 16 men on a dead man's chest... That is despairing...

But, hey, McG... You and me ain't in the Obits today so let's just knock back a few beers and call this day a good 'un...

B;~)

Subject: RE: BS: What fills you with despair?
From: Wesley S
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 08:51 AM

The number of people in my town that think that yard signs and bumper stickers will influence how I vote.

Subject: BS: What fills you with despair?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 10 Oct 12 - 08:41 AM

A few years ago I found myself in that Macbeth-like state of "I have lived too long". The trigger for this despairing feeling was reading that a world-record price for an oil painting had just been paid in a NY saleroom: not for a Van Eyck or a Signorelli, a Botticelli or a Leonardo, a Guardi or a Canaletto, even a Picasso or a Matisse ~~ but for a Vladimir Tretchikoff; he of the green-faced women.

World record. Tretchikoff. Got to be time to go. Farewell cruel world...

This has been brought back to me by this very morning's Times, in the context of the news that someone had been arrested for defacing one of his works [tho, as a feature writer asked yesterday, how could they tell?], the highest price paid at auction for a C20 artist [presumable thereby outdoing even that blasted Tretchikoff], was for a Rothko.

Oh God! Oh well -- I am 80 now...

So -- what comparatively trivial but important-to-you manifestation of modern life fills you with that sort of "oh what's the use!" existential despair?

~Michael~