Ambitious Artists--Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
Artists are ambitious. Some are, at least. Well, at a minimum those described here qualify.
In Sexual Personae Camille Paglia famously posits the same apollonian drive to Mozart and serial killers. Ambition is ambition and when channeled into the arts leads to the Mona Lisa, David, and "Un Chien Andalou." When channeled in other directions we can build a thousand mile wall or execute a country. The human being is infinite potential seldom realized--a shame for the good, a relief for the evil.
from Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi
Geoff Dyer
Quite a bit of the work on display could have been designated conceptual in so far as the people looking at it were conceived as having the mentality of pupils at junior school. Fair enough, except most of it looked like it was made by someone in primary school, albeit a primary school pupil with the ambition of a seventeen-year old Russian whose widowed mother had saved every ruble to get him into a tennis academy in Florida. The work may have been puerile, but the hunger to succeed of which it was the product and symbol was ravenous. In different historical circumstances any number of these artists could have seized control of the Reichstag or ruled Cambodia with unprecedented ruthlessness.
In Sexual Personae Camille Paglia famously posits the same apollonian drive to Mozart and serial killers. Ambition is ambition and when channeled into the arts leads to the Mona Lisa, David, and "Un Chien Andalou." When channeled in other directions we can build a thousand mile wall or execute a country. The human being is infinite potential seldom realized--a shame for the good, a relief for the evil.
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