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| Bruce Nauman as an artist with pure inspiration bubbling out of him |
I have no time at the moment to visit exhibitions. So I'm left with hear-say, gossip, and news I get from Facebook:
The New York Times recently organised in Berlin during Gallery Weekend a two-days conference about art. It was quite expensive and important guests were invited to talk. A friend revealed it was all very awkward: "They were talking about art with no artists present."
"Vielleicht bin ich auch berühmt," W. says, "und merke es gar nicht!" (Maybe I'm also famous and I just haven't noticed it!")
W. and I are considering what to eat for dinner: "There must be something one could eat without getting fat!"
On the window of the bookstore is written: "Bücher sind die einzige Zeitmaschine die funktioniert." (Books are the only time machine that functions.) Inside it still smells of the GDR.
I asked artist C. if she ever met some famous people. She gave me three stories:
1. C. met Karl Lagerfeld in the hallway of his home in Paris. He has a floor in a Palacio and the artist’s uncle was living upstairs. She was introduced and they shook hands. I forgot to ask C. if Lagerfeld had his gloves on.
2. When C. was waitressing in a fancy restaurant in Paris, Mick Jagger arrived at the door. The restaurant was fully booked and he didn’t get in.
3. In a New York bar, C. was sitting at a table with musicians and one of them was Lenny Kravitz. She didn’t get to talk to him.
I'm reading a text of which the author keeps referring to something he already mentioned before: "...die ich bereits erwähnt habe..." - "...ich habe es eben angedeutet..." I wonder if he wants to check if I was paying attention: In case you didn't hear me! Or maybe it can also be translated as: "Ich muss das Zeichenhonorar bekommen!"( I'm getting a fee based on the number of characters!)
I know I shouldn't get into Facebook discussions. But then sometimes I can't stop myself. So I got into a discussion with a friend artist about an Agnes Martin quote, which said that the artist is a source of pure inspiration coming from the inside, uninfluenced by the outside. A few days before I had been listening to a great BBC4 art documentary with amazing archival audio. I heard Man Ray saying that "there is no art without being influence.” And a bit later Marcel Duchamp commented on how even your paint brush influences what you do.