Wednesday, November 21, 2007

On "Fucking Up"

There is an interview with art critic Dave Hickey in the current issue of The Believer. I was flipping through and I saw another image by Gajin Fujita, so I decided to give it a read. Apparently, one of the reasons that there aren't many career art critics today is because "a whole generation of critics died of AIDS in the ’80s."

But I'm posting the reference for completely different reasons. At one point in the interview, Hickey suddenly takes an interest in the age of his interviewer, a female. She says she's thirty years old, and Hickey responds

"Great! You’re a bright young thing. You have all the way till you’re forty to totally fuck up your life. It takes that long, if you’re really talented, to really fuck everything up. You just go up and up and up and up, and all of a sudden you’ve got three ex-husbands, a broken-down Porsche, a bunch of leather clothes, some haute-couture accessories, and no prospects at all."

Opinions like that really just hit you in the face sometimes with just how someone else's perception of life can change with age and experience. So, finding myself in a strange relationship with my youth, I appreciated this odd piece of advice from this unashamedly odd, John Falstaff sort of guy.

Also, the images in the latest New American Paintings are really nice.

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2 comments:

Mike Germon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Mike Germon said...

Truely outrageous.