Magritte is not one of my favourite artists, and it was very much a matter of chance that I turned to a review of his recent biography, by Alex Danchev. Actually, it was Danchev’s name that provided the hook. A man of many parts, he and I jointly examined a Ph.D. thesis many years ago. … Read more
Or so we are told. I have in mind all this stuff about artists being “professionals”. After posting yesterday’s piece, in which I wrote about art as manual labour, I fell to thinking about a book I read many years ago. This was the biography of Mozart written by Norbert Elias.* Mozart was a figure … Read more
I have just read, on Facebook, a post from a friend of mine who is also an artist. He was desperately unhappy because he has shown work in two venues and sold nothing. The project was one which he believed to be a sure-fire success. As it is, he is dreadfully dejected. I tried to … Read more
An interesting question came up in a discussion with friends this afternoon.* The point of origin of our conversation was whether as children we had had particular ambitions about what we would do when we grew up. From that emerged the problem of whether to have ambition is, or is not, a good thing. We … Read more