Blood dries to almost black. Not one of these artists stooped to using their own blood. They don’t even put their hearts into their work; how can they be expected to put their blood into it?
They will use every type of exotic ink, every trick of process, lack of process, lack of effort, over exertion of effort… all of it vain, pointless, without imagination and empty.
Listening to that reading we are yet again reminded of how low many people have sunk. No heart, no blood, no sense, no feeling.
To damn these (Black Page) artists for their lack of heart (and blood) is, in my opinion, highly unfair. To infer a lack of heart from a view of the product is too subjective a method upon which to base damnation. There are some reknowned artists of whom one could not argue that they put their all into their works, yet the products of their labours do not move me. In fact, some pieces could perfectly well be secribed as ‘vain, pointless, without imagination and empty’! I may concede that doing with ones heart is the only way to produce work which satisfies the self, while my subjective view is that many efforts generated in this way remain inconsequential on a broader level, that others do not feel what the artist may regard as their ‘worth’. [Of course, the validation of ones hearts work by others is, in itself, inconsequential]. Others may hold a similar view of the Black Pages, or the contrary view of a reknowned artist with ‘heart’. Similary, work produced by what may be regarded as heartless artists move many folk to empathise.
Life is not fair, and I am not here to be fair, to give way, to relent or repent or confess or abstain.
I scorn them because they fail to move me. They fail to rise to the occasion when we are all about to be utterly damned.
After hearing the text read out, that poetry written by a man with blood in his veins pumped by a heart that could truly love, the responses were all the more shocking for their lack of love, of heart and of blood.
Only people who were unmoved could produce such empty throwaway gestures; and people like that, I do not like.
One of the participants even put the official state portrait of Barack Hussein Obama as his black page ‘for obvious reasons’.
These people make me sick.
They make me feel a great and deep sadness for this country; in a way, they have actually accomplished their job of stirring my spirit – to deep despair.
These people are in the same category as the Trafalgar Plinth participants IMHO. They offer nothing, say nothing, and are completely without blood… ‘milk blooded‘. The only difference between this and the plinth exercise is the scale and the PR.
Duffy is able to look back on his incendiary moment in 1979 with a certain amount of phlegmatism.
“One morning I came into work, my assistant said we haven’t got any toilet paper. I was employing four staff, was managing director, head of this organisation and my decision was on toilet paper. At that moment I cracked. Later that day I burned something, then I went into burning mode. I got reported and the council came round.
“They were in a big bin. I was making a lot of smoke. Negatives don’t burn easily. They make a hell of a lot smoke.”
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:49 am
Blood dries to almost black. Not one of these artists stooped to using their own blood. They don’t even put their hearts into their work; how can they be expected to put their blood into it?
They will use every type of exotic ink, every trick of process, lack of process, lack of effort, over exertion of effort… all of it vain, pointless, without imagination and empty.
Listening to that reading we are yet again reminded of how low many people have sunk. No heart, no blood, no sense, no feeling.
No life!
October 5th, 2009 at 9:09 am
Simply using blood in art doesn’t make the end product worth viewing, nor does it imbue the ‘art’ with any special meaning should the viewer not choose to sympathise or intellectualise along with the arist…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/oct/02/menstruation-feminist-activists
To damn these (Black Page) artists for their lack of heart (and blood) is, in my opinion, highly unfair. To infer a lack of heart from a view of the product is too subjective a method upon which to base damnation. There are some reknowned artists of whom one could not argue that they put their all into their works, yet the products of their labours do not move me. In fact, some pieces could perfectly well be secribed as ‘vain, pointless, without imagination and empty’! I may concede that doing with ones heart is the only way to produce work which satisfies the self, while my subjective view is that many efforts generated in this way remain inconsequential on a broader level, that others do not feel what the artist may regard as their ‘worth’. [Of course, the validation of ones hearts work by others is, in itself, inconsequential]. Others may hold a similar view of the Black Pages, or the contrary view of a reknowned artist with ‘heart’. Similary, work produced by what may be regarded as heartless artists move many folk to empathise.
October 5th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Life is not fair, and I am not here to be fair, to give way, to relent or repent or confess or abstain.
I scorn them because they fail to move me. They fail to rise to the occasion when we are all about to be utterly damned.
After hearing the text read out, that poetry written by a man with blood in his veins pumped by a heart that could truly love, the responses were all the more shocking for their lack of love, of heart and of blood.
Only people who were unmoved could produce such empty throwaway gestures; and people like that, I do not like.
One of the participants even put the official state portrait of Barack Hussein Obama as his black page ‘for obvious reasons’.
These people make me sick.
They make me feel a great and deep sadness for this country; in a way, they have actually accomplished their job of stirring my spirit – to deep despair.
These people are in the same category as the Trafalgar Plinth participants IMHO. They offer nothing, say nothing, and are completely without blood… ‘milk blooded‘. The only difference between this and the plinth exercise is the scale and the PR.
REAL PEOPLE: Be them!
October 14th, 2009 at 11:27 am
One of the greatest did of course use their blood in their art.