Vivian Maier, Van Gogh, A Confederacy Of Dunces… and me

January 12, 2012 4 Comments

You know you’re not a kid anymore when you choose to listen to public radio in your car instead of only pumping music that contains a maximum of three different words in it’s entirety… That’s not to say, there’s some kids out there that don’t listen to NPR, and that’s not to say I don’t ever listen to music with no words in it, or simplistic rhythmatic dance music, or any other combination…

Oh hell, the other day I was listening to NPR okay or some talk radio channel… And they had this program on which was talking with some Chicago fellow that discovered, as one online video puts it, “one of the finest street photographers of the 20^th century.”  And this guy, he just happened to discover the 100,000 photographic negatives after the photographer’s death…

And, if you don’t know already know the story I’m referring to… How did the former real estate agent discover a street photographers amazing work after her death?

Because apparently she didn’t show the images to anyone while she was alive… Or possibly no one took notice of them. And after she died, one of her boxes was at an auction, and the 26 year old, named John Maloof, bought a box with 30,000 negatives for $400.00. Apparently he was so blown away by the images the box contained, he contacted the other people that bought boxes of her work at the auction, and he bought those boxes as well… All this, he later found out, only days after her obituary was published.

Her name was/is Vivian Maier, and during her life she worked as a nanny, not as a photographer… Apparently she shot photographs on her days off or on her lunch hours.

The story is all over the place at this point, and if you’re really interested in the story, which I was, I suggest you look it up…  As well as doing a quick image search to see some of her work…

But that’s not what I’m writing about…

Vincent van Gogh died penniless, yet as one web site states… The Portrait of Dr. Gachet sold for $82,500,000, bought by a Japanese businessman, 100 years after Van Gogh’s death.

One of my favorite books ever A Confederacy Of Dunces was written by John Kennedy Toole, and published 11 years after his suicide.  Discovered under his bed by his mother, and posthumously he won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1981.

So what is this blog about?

If it’s not about Vivian Maier… Is it about penniless artists? Or the frustration of artists not being appreciated during their lifetimes…?

I wasn’t a friend of Vivian’s or Vincent’s or John’s… I can’t say why they weren’t critically successful while they were alive… I’m sure there’s half a dozen brilliant art historians slash cultural physiologist that have tackled the subject and explain it perfectly…

All I can write about is my perspective, and I have to say when I was listening to the NPR story, so many emotions ran through my body… I was happy that an obviously talented artist was discovered, I was angry that someone that had nothing to do with the creation of the art “discovered” it and is profiting from it, I was understanding that the “discoverer” does deserve to be rewarded for his discovery, and for his risk and his time put in… I felt for her, wondering what caused her to keep the negatives in boxes instead of showing to people… I wondered if she had shown them to people, but got only mild responses from them, or negative feedback from them, and found it much less painful to just store the images in a dark box… And of course I’m simplifying what I felt into words like “happy” and “angry”… in truth, a lot of what I felt, I couldn’t describe or explain now or then.

When it comes to my work… One negative comment, or rejection, or even one “I haven’t gotten to it yet” speaks volumes louder than any amount of praise…

Somehow I trust a negative to be true, but positive feedback I can’t be sure of… Perhaps the person saying it because they want something from me, or they want me to compliment them… Maybe they’re just being nice… Or maybe they’re nuts…

I realize it’s complete insecurity… I should be able to trust the positive comments as much as I trust the negative, and distrust the negative as much as the positive. Yet I, and many of us, have trouble with that.

I’m not really getting at what is bugging me so deeply, I didn’t hear this interview this morning, or even last night… This has been sticking with me for days… And I didn’t read A Confederacy Of Dunces last week, last month or even last year… I probably read that book in the early 90s. I guess I’m just in a bit of a slump.

While some artists are truly appreciated during their time, and some artists are way too appreciated during their time, many aren’t, and many are never.  I wonder how many photographers, that took amazing shots like Vivian, had boxes of negatives that are now in some landfill somewhere.

It’s taken me years to realize I’m some kind of artist, I’m not really sure what sort of artist I am… But, there’s no question with writing, shooting photography, singing, acting, directing, building… there’s got to be an element of art in there… My mother was an amateur artist, my grandmother was apparently a community theater actress in her youth, my Aunt and all her children are or were all singers and piano players, my brother Paul is a talented professional artist, my Uncle Ron is as well… Heck, I am very blessed to be able to say I know many very talented artists in many many different mediums…  Truly I know so many talented singers, pianists, vocalists, fire dancers, metal workers, ballet dancers, painters, choreographers, actors, directors… It’s amazing.

It’s a bittersweet feeling that, many artists I’ve known over the years have already given up (maybe I’ll explain why I have a bittersweet feeling some other time), abandoning their art for jobs, or responsibilities, or families, and undoubtedly, as life goes on, more will… Storing photo boxes in basements, scripts in hard drives, poems in journals… And possibly even more tragic, many artists I know will never fully dive in, and many amateur and professional artists alike will die with unrealized films, beautiful paintings and amazing artistic ideas never expressed anywhere, but simply lost in their individual minds.

I don’t for a second wonder why so many artists become alcoholics, or food addicts, or drug addicts… Though I’m happy to say most of the artists I know are none of these things, or at least have a handle on them so that most people aren’t aware of the problems…  Not getting the art inside of us out can be uncomfortable.  And showing our work to people or the public can be more so. And having work sit and collect dust, until the day we pass… Well, that’s just a really freaking cheery thought now isn’t it.

I don’t know what the heck I just wrote, but screw it… Ignore it, praise it, read it, think about it, or criticize at will…

BTW, for the artists out there, to give this a positive spin, let me recommend a book I’m late in getting to, The War Of Art , by Steven Pressfield… I recommend it greatly. After I returned a borrowed copy to the library, I went out and bought a copy to read again, and keep on my shelf.

-Quiche Out

(okay this blog was my daily minimum of 30 minutes of writing, prior to that I did my daily minimum of 30 minutes singing or vocalizing, and in-between the two I did my daily minimum of 30 minutes of exercise, and I’ve also already checked off my daily minimum of 30 minutes of business – And no, I don’t mean using the toilet.)

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