shiny new essay

I'm a shiny new essay.  I'm supposedly gonna talk about art.  But I don't really know much about it.  I like to make art.  That is if this is accepted as art.  Well no, because I don't really look for acceptance as a measure of art.  That would be a bad idea I think.

You see, acceptance is just not a value one can use for this stuff.  It doesn't work as a measure.  Why not? Well for example,  when Manet did his magnificent painting of Olympia, there was a movement if you can believe it to cut that painting up and burn it.  It was hated.  The critics thought he was cutting up people because the girl stood behind a bar and her lower half was not visible.

And no, I don't measure anything I do against a Manet.  That doesn't work either.  You see, he is now a famous and acclaimed artist.  I am a nothing and an unacclaimed nothing.

I am a nobody nowhere.  Yet, to give another example, just one more okay?  When Magritte came to Paris and Breton got him a show there,  the critics laughed at it, and Magritte went back to Belgium, ashamed and penniless.

This stuff juste happens.  And continues to happen.  Nothing has changed.  But what has changed is that many artists know that it is hopeless..and yet, even believing that, they still criticize themselves, and call themselves every tragic and ugly name they can think of.  Well maybe nothing at all has changed.

I have few illusions:  the cause is lost in advance.  As for me, I do my part, which is to drag a fairly drab existence to its conclusion. -Rene Magritte