An Interview with Norman Olson
by Dee Rimbaud (January 2005)
Dee - Norman, if I remember rightly, I first saw your artwork in
Lummox Journal. I've seen it in many poetry and lit magazines since then. Alongside myself and
Claudio Parentela you are one of the most prominent artists in the small press scene. Whilst it is nice to see your work in zines and to receive free copies in payment (and even the odd token payment from more affluent magazines) it doesn't really pay the bills. The usual route for artists to take in order to try and make a living from their art is through the gallery system. Personally, I gave up on galleries a long time ago, as figurative, narrative, symbolist and imagist work has been long sidelined in favour of abstract, minimalist and conceptual art. Would you agree with this assessment of the current art climate? And if so, what are your thoughts on it? I'd also like to know if you have given up on galleries altogether, or do you still sometimes exhibit?
Norman - Like you, I realized many years ago that there was no place for the kind of art (Imagist, Symbolist, Representational) that interests me, in the New
York oriented gallery world. The strange thing is people that see my art, pretty much without exception dig it, except art gallery people. I think the art lovers have been trained to not like image art, so much that they cannot relax and enjoy it. I make the analogy with the music scene, it is as if classical music was all that was allowed while we are doing rock and roll. 20th Century gallery art is of so little interest to me that I never go to contemporary art galleries. When I go to museums, I skip over the 20th Century wing because there is nothing there for me. From like
Jasper Johns to
Julian Schnabel, and whoever is "hot" this week, it is all a New York, fashion thing... it is all about who the artist is and the non-image art is so boring that it is just irrelevant. I mean, the focus should well be on the artists because the art is so nothing. Still, I would probably be the first in line to have a show at a big gallery if they wanted me, but they don't, so fuck em....
I am 57 years old and have never made any money from art. Well, the situation is the same as it was 120 years ago when the art experts said that
Bougerou and
Gerome were the greatest artists of all time while the door was closed to
Cezanne and
Van Gogh. Today, the door is closed to you and I. The style in power has changed, but the dynamic is the same, a bunch of rich experts dictating what is and what is not acceptable as art and the art buying public following like lambs... but, my work has aroused some interest in some dark corners of the art world lately, so maybe things are changing.... who knows? Who cares? I do art because I cannot stop... it is as
Bukowski said, " a form or insanity." People all over the world respond to and dig my art and that is enough for me... let the fat cats keep their money.... I will be gone soon and then this will all be somebody else's problem....
I would like to find a buyer for my entire life's work (which I have -- like 300 drawings and maybe 20 large oil paintings) and a dealer in San Francisco and,
Bruntons International, a dealer in Scotland, seem to think that is a possibility, but I don't know.... so, I still work at a civil service job and do art when I can.... I have worked at jobs to support myself for 40 years and I guess wading through the same shit that everybody else has to in this life is not a bad thing for an artist... and I love it when ordinary working people dig my work....
The art world can kiss my ass...
Dee - It’s good to hear there are some possibilities in the offing for you Norman. It wouldn’t surprise me if you were suddenly discovered, but even if you aren’t it won’t be too long till you are of retirement age. At least, I’m assuming this is the case, coz it’s 65 in the UK. But things are different in the USA. We get free medical treatment in the UK, and you are guaranteed a basic pension after 65. Are you sorted for your ‘old age’, or is this a worry to you? Assuming you are, are you looking forward to a time when you can paint and draw full time? And are you confident you’ll be able to use your free time fruitfully? I ask this because my father was a teacher and part-time artist all his life, and he deeply resented having to work, wanting nothing more than to be a full-time artist. Like you, he was a figurative artist, and completely ignored, despite his obvious talent, because of the fashions of the day: ie pop art, abstract expressionism and minimalism (which he hates with a vengeance). He managed to wangle early retirement, at the age of 55. He’s been retired about 13 years now. But, he never made much of his retirement, averaging about 2 or 3 paintings a year, and at least a couple of thousand hours of television. He’s never had an exhibition in all that time. I’m not saying this to piss on your bonfire, but I’d highly recommend that you chuck the television out the window the day you retire.
Norman - Great Question!!! I don't watch TV much.... mostly in USA, it is very boring, stupid stuff.... I watch American football and sometimes a basketball game, but that's about it.... Regarding age, I am 57 (as of February 16, 2005) and believe very much in living in the present. My dad died at 65, so I don't know how many years I have left...
I begin with the premise that the world does not need more art... there is no reason beyond my own skin for me to do art. Doing art is not important, good, noble, of value to society, etc... I do art as I breath; it is just something I do.... I can't imagine being alive and not doing art, but, it would certainly be easier not to do art, so, if that ever becomes an option, it would be, perhaps a welcome one... for now, I have accepted that it is a compulsion and that I write and draw for personal reasons. I really don't need to know more than that about it. It is very cool that some people dig my work, but, if nobody did, I would still do it anyway....
For example, I like to sit and draw in public places.... people walk by and look at the drawing and they always want to talk about it.... the conversation about a recent drawing that I had with a guy while I was sitting in a lobby waiting for my wife is worth more to me than being some kind of
Jasper Johns or
Andy Warhol... but, when the conversation was done, I finished the drawing at home alone.... will other people see it? If they do will they like it? Well, I really am not too worried about that. If they do, they do and if they don't they don't. I do what I can but getting art to an audience is definitely a side trip for me.
In the art world, where all these young artists are fighting it out for gallery space because they are desperate to BE full time artists, the whole thing seems to me to be about ego satisfaction... well, different strokes for different folks, but my ego is so strange and fucked up that I would be every bit as uncomfortable with success as I am with failure.... I know that from the little successes I have had.... I am an emotionally unstable person and I need peace and quiet and order in my life to get through, eat, sleep, not be insane, etc. Yes my life is full of highs and lows, as is everybody's... but I need quiet and stability to survive... regarding fame, that really is a chimera, a fake, nothing real... the illusion is that things last, we still remember
Leonardo Da Vinci, but for how long.... 4 billion years ago, the earth was a ball of molten rock, sometime in the future, the sun will supernova and this planet that seems so big and important will simply vanish... if one person sees my art, or a million or a trillion, or nobody, it is all the same... if it lasts a year or ten years or ten centuries, all that could possibly be is delay of the inevitable...
In America, we love celebrities and want them to be like demi-gods, everybody wants to be a celebrity, a rock star, a
Jasper Johns , but, that is a plastic trip to nowhere... it is better to just be who you are and where you are.... no matter that the past and future are nothing... this little piece of today, call it awareness is the only thing that seems real to me, well, that and getting laid once in a while....
Dee - Aside from the reference to getting laid, much of the sentiment you express above reminds me of
Buddhist philosophy. Is that something you are interested in? What’s your take on ‘spirituality’?
Norman - Well, I really am almost totally ignorant of
Buddhism . I really try to
ignore religion. All religions claim to have all the answers... maybe they
are all right; maybe they are all wrong. I don't know; I try not to think
about it because my guess is no better than anybody else's and a lot of very
nasty shit has been done throughout history in the name of religion.
Actually, the dimensions of the senses, sight, sound, touch, etc. plus, what
I know or think I know and what my brain makes up is an amazing, complex and weird reality, far more interesting, and frightening too, than supernatural
stuff... so, I am not a spiritual person. Just another dude with an evolved
monkey brain.
Dee - I’m not a big fan of organised religions myself, though I have a soft spot for
Buddhism , as it’s technically a philosophy, rather than a religion. I do find it hard to believe that we’re just evolved monkeys, but I’m willing to concede you may well be right. It’s a strange kind of evolution though, eh? Have you always been an atheist? Given your age, you’d have been about 19 when the whole hippie thing exploded, and there was a lot of ‘spiritual’ and pseudo-spiritual baggage that went with that movement. Did you get into all that when it happened? Have you ever done psychedelic drugs? Your paintings certainly have a vibrancy that suggests you might have, but maybe your brain’s just hard-wired that way naturally? What are your thoughts about the hippie movement, and about youth sub-cultures in general?
Norman - Well, I don't like the word "atheist" either because that would suggest that I know and have made up my mind about all of those supernatural things and the truth is, I don't know if there is a god or any of that... maybe there is maybe there is not... seems to me we have a lot in common with the monkeys and apes, but, they certainly don't have much in the way of art, so, who knows??? I try not to think about it... but, I love the conceit that the measure of the universe, may be an evolved monkey brain.... it sort of puts things in perspective for me.
Re the late sixties, well, the hippies were at that time, mostly middle class and upper middle class college kids, while I came from a poor, working class family... mom was a proof-reader, dad a drunk and failed farmer...who worked at the post office loading trucks... of my high school acquaintances, I was the only one that went to college, the rest went in the army or marines... some came back from Vietnam, many, including my brother who was 17 months older than me did not... I was mostly a bystander... at the University of Minnesota, I can see myself in 1969, the year after my brother died, stomping around the campus in a worn corduroy coat and thick glasses... I was at war with the art department which was dominated by abstract expressionists straight off the bus from New York who thought
Hans Hoffman and
Jackson Pollock were great geniuses... while I wanted to paint like
Casper David Fredrich...
I did not realize it at the time, but I was clinically depressed following the death of my brother in February of 1968, could not concentrate enough to read a complete page, slept 25 hours at a stretch, had spells of catatonia... instead of going to class, I would sit in the library and look at old books I found on the shelves... or go to the music store and spend hours looking at the record jackets... I would go to the rare books section of the library and study facsimiles of the books of
William Blake... I remember sitting under the freeway bridge with American Indian winos... knowing that my little corner of America was a shit pile and I belonged there for sure!!! I did not have any money and would have to decide whether to buy two hamburgers or a pack of cigarettes, I usually opted for the cigarettes because they kept hunger away and lasted longer than the burgers... I loved looking at the women but was too shy to talk to any... I did not have any friends and it seemed to me that the university was idiotic and the world beyond it was totally insane...
My father was an alcoholic and later addicted to benzodiazepines, so, I had a lot of experience with drugs and alcohol to the degree that I knew what bullshit the take a toke and see god philosophy was... so, the late sixties were not a happy time for me... some people need to shoot heroin or drop acid to put focus, vision and angst into their art... those things come to me naturally. Some people take stuff to make them feel good... I really am comfortable the way I am and don't have much interest in feeling good... there is somehow a satisfaction to seeing the dark side, without valium, if you see what I mean...
Maybe I am nuts... many would say that is true, although, I hold a job, have raised a family, etc. so, would argue that I have successfully proven my ability to survive and navigate society, if not my sanity. My youth was pretty fucked up and miserable, but still, there is a great beauty in the young, a sort of purity or something that changes as you age... I mean being old is okay, it sure beats being dead, but, it is different from being young....
Dee - Norman, I think you’ve got perfect material there for an autobiographical novel. There must be many people out there who missed out on the whole hippie ‘revolution’ because they were born on the wrong side of the tracks, or because of difficult personal circumstances. You strike me as a misfit who couldn’t even fit in with the misfits, if you see what I mean. To some, that might seem like an unenviable position, but I believe (and I’m talking from personal experience here) being an outsider is a positive advantage for a writer or an artist. There is a kind of ‘madness’ to it - it’s not a nuthouse, clinically insane sort of madness, but it’s none too comfortable too. However, I embrace that madness, and celebrate my ‘difference’, my status as outsider. I’d never want to be in with the in-crowd, no matter how cosy and comfortable it might appear to be. There’s nothing like comfort to stifle creativity and vision.
Your story reminds me a lot of the semi-autobiographical novel,
‘Lanark’ by the Scottish artist and writer,
Alasdair Gray. He too was working class, went to an art school, which was dominated by middle class students, and was a rebel and an outsider. He’s thirteen years your senior, so there wasn’t too much sex, drugs and rock & roll around when he was a student, but aside from that, there’s a lot of similarities in your stories. You probably won’t have heard of him, as I don’t think he’s well known outside the UK, but you would certainly relate to him, and you would probably also appreciate his artwork, which is figurative and narrative (often on a grand scale). You should definitely check him out.
I’m trying to think of an American equivalent of
Alasdair Gray, but no-one comes to mind. The only one that’s remotely close is
Charles Bukowski (and that's stretching a tenuous link to the limits). Unlike Gray, who can walk the streets of Glasgow unmolested by admirers,
Charles Bukowski 's hero-worshipped as some sort of blue-collar/ beat icon. The way some people prattle on about him, you'd think he deserves to be canonised. I’m going to nail my colours to the mast here and say I think he’s totally overrated - not my kind of hero at all. What about you, does Saint Buk do it for you? If not, who? Who are your heroes? And why?
Norman - Well, one thing about the time consuming part of doing a day job is that I have little enough time for creative pursuits that I have to allocate my time carefully… in the last few years, I have not written much prose. Partly because prose, like novels are so hard to get published that it seems like kind of a waste of time, and I don’t have that driving compulsion to do it that I have for some other art forms… and partly because I am doing other things, painting drawing, writing poetry that also take lots of time… In the past, prose I have written has been more theoretical and expository than autobiographical... But, who knows what the future holds.
Regarding
Bukowski , back in the early 1980s, when he was just starting to get famous from prose, I discovered his writings. I think he is a very fine, funny and interesting writer. My poetry is very different from his, but I am a great reader and enjoy reading all kinds of stuff that is far different from what I write or could write.
I read a lot, from science fiction to the classics and have eclectic taste. I am a huge fan of
Irvine Welsh (the Trainspotting guy) for example… but I just finished a new one by
Grisham, and one of the
Sandford crime novels… I read a couple novels a week and also biographies when I can find one about a person that interests me.
I love to read prose, poetry, whatever… Back to
Bukowski , when I finished
Ham on Rye, (I think that was the first one that I read, or maybe
Factotum) I thought it was a great novel. At the time, I was about 15 years into a factory gig, working at Webb Publishing Company putting rolls of paper on giant printing presses that printed magazines, advertisements and telephone books….all work that is now done in Indonesia... I used to read and draw while the rolls ran down … my co-workers used the time to smoke pot and shoot the shit… I was the weird guy who sat on an ink can behind the press and did weird little drawings or read odd ball novels… I have never had much interest in being either an insider or an outsider, but, now that you mention it, I can see that I have been outsider a lot…. Maybe just because I prefer my own company and am not greatly interested in socializing.
The night I finished
Ham on Rye, I wrote a fan letter to the author…. It was not uncommon for me to do that…. I often would send a note to an author that I had enjoyed this or that book…. I thought they would like to know…. Once in a while I would get a note back, and that was kind of cool too…. So, anyway, I got a letter back from
Bukowski which was very cool, so, during the next year or so, I wrote him two more letters and received two more replies… I wrote the letters on scraps of paper laying around the pressroom while sitting on my ink can behind the press…. I had the time, so why not?
I always thought it was kind of foolish for my co-workers to get so fucked up when they were working around all of that heavy machinery, and I did not want to lose a finger, or a hand, as some did… so, did not join in the pot sessions… so, oddly, was reading
Bukowski and exchanging letters with him while everybody around me was getting fucked up and I was not!!!
Bukowski’s humour is great and his books always make me laugh… copies of the letters are now published on the
Lummox website. click on the Last Call button and I think it is called Bukoskiana, or something like that…
Yes, I enjoy reading
Bukowski and rereading, but have no interest in imitating his lifestyle…or his art… He knew exactly what he was, a writer in the tradition of
Hamsun,
Zola,
Fante,
Celine and, yes,
Hemmingway (all of whom I also have read and enjoyed) but, the roots of my art are elsewhere.
My heroes are mostly artists and writers, I love the Victorian artists and the
Ndebele women of South Africa… I dig the old masters… I love the romantic British (and Scottish) poets….
Burns,
Shelly,
Blake,
Byron,
Keats, even
Wordsworth.... Love
Dylan Thomas, the novels of
Jack Kerouac, the music of
Kurt Cobain, so many, that the list would go on an on,
AC/DC,
Mississippi John Hurt,
Leadbelly,
Marcel Duchamp’s paintings,
John Fahey,
Phillip K. Dick,
HR Giger, so many people of such great intellect and talent have done art, music, lit that it boggles the mind and I say how pretentious of me to even call myself artist or writer when all these amazing people have done such cool stuff…
Dee - Yeh, but at the same time there are folk out there who can hardly string two words together or draw a paintbrush across a canvas who are perfectly happy to call themselves writers and artists. During my long, lonely, thankless stints as editor of
Dada Dance and
Acid Angel I was inundated by submissions of utter doggerel, many of them accompanied by letters proclaiming that said author was a genius (and I’d be a fool not to recognise it). I still, to this day, marvel at the delusions that some people labour under.
I reckon humility (in small doses) is a useful virtue. If nothing else, it spurs us on to try and improve ourselves. Even where people are genuinely talented I think acclaim and fame can be extremely damaging, especially where it is achieved at an early age. It encourages complacency. It also breeds fear in the writer or artist, and they shun experimentation in case they lose their audience.
Imagine if
Van Gogh had hit the big time when he was young. You can bet your bottom dollar there’d have been no sunflower paintings or starry starry nights. Lack of acclaim was a blessing in disguise, even if it didn’t feel like a blessing to Vincent at the time. I tell you what, at times when I doubt my abilities, I console myself with the fact that I’ve sold more work than
Van Gogh ever did in his lifetime.
I haven’t seen any of your writing, but I can tell you, you are not ‘pretentious’, calling yourself an artist. I’m sure anyone familiar with your work would agree with me. Who knows, maybe one day after you’re dead your work will be swapping hands for more than you earned in your entire lifetime? There’s no way of predicting what will or won’t be considered ‘great’ in years to come. Fashions change like the wind. And those who decide for us, what is or isn’t great art are as fickle as a gang of kindergarten kids.
Imagine telling some puffed up 19th Century Academician that one hundred years hence no-one would remember his paintings and that folk would be flocking to see pickled cows in glass tanks!
One day my grandkids might brag to their friends that I had once corresponded with the great Norman Olson. Who knows, maybe
Jackson Pollock and
Jasper Johns will be consigned to the dustbin of history? There’s no way of telling.
Incidentally, I heard a theory that abstract expressionism was bankrolled by the CIA: the theory being that by promoting art that has no message the subversive power of art would be dissipated. Certainly, there’s nothing subversive or challenging (emotionally, mentally or politically) about a paint spattered canvas. It might look interesting. The colours, shapes and forms might even be lyrical, but do they engage the viewer? Do they challenge him or her?
When you consider 20th Century Art, who do you think will survive the test of time? Who will be in the art history books in the 22nd Century? And, this is an entirely different question, who do you hope will be in the art history books in the 22nd Century?
Norman- The questions you raise are those that I think every artist at one time or another must confront, i.e. how to deal with the past and how to deal with the future. I am fascinated by the past and enjoy reading about it and studying it. Regarding the future, it is one of those things I have very little control over, so, I need to just let it go. I like to think of my art being looked at and responded to by people whether it is now, or in some remote future after I am dead and gone. but really, what happens after I am dead is pretty much not my problem.
I have gotten over my youthful hostility to abstract expressionism. It is an easy, beautiful and fun way to do art. The paintings make great decorations and people who put up art in public spaces love them because they are, as you point out, non-controversial, no cocks and pussies, for example, and at the same time fun to look at. Still, the work doesn't interest me much. When the pieces hang in a so-called museum of modern art, they take on the character of artefacts, like
Elvis's shirt, for example and as artefacts, they are interesting. I mean, if you are fascinated by the life of celebrity artists like
Basquiat or
Pollock, seeing a real painting they did is I guess more real than the docudrama of their life story. But as art, well, nobody is home most of the time. Pickled cows in a jar. Man, most of that stuff is the most obvious drivel; it just does not interest me. Those pieces often wind up making only the most simple minded and shallow of philosophical statements, like, for example answering sterile and pointless semantic questions like whether a bank of video monitors in a "book art" gallery is or is not a "book". Or is a urinal in an art gallery "art?". Or is a pickled cow in a jar "shocking?" So who fucking cares about that kind of crap??? The pile of rocks on the neat hardwood floor of the gallery is seldom as interesting as the pile of rocks in the alley behind the gallery or down the block.
I think I am a better artist than poet, but you can see two of my best poems at:
Cultural Logic, which is a communist e-journal. I have a few more pieces scattered around the web and, will send a chapbook to anyone who writes to me and requests one. Norman J. Olson, 946 N. McKnight Rd., Maplewood, MN 55119-3635, USA, or
normanjolson@hotmail.com .
I am not
Keats, or
Dylan Thomas, but have written a few good pieces, I think. I am a very good reader, good voice for my poetry. Anyone who has been at one of my few poetry readings will vouch for that, but doing poetry readings is just so much of a hassle that I do very few. There is not much of an audience and scraping together an invitation and lining up a gig is such a pain in the ass that it hardly seems worth the trouble. I have published four or five short stories and maybe 25 essays on art and aesthetics but prose takes time that I just do not have now.
The thing is, all of the stuff that surrounds doing art, selling it, having it valued as great art, having it survive for posterity, finding an audience. All of that stuff is important, but it really is a secondary concern for me. For me, the doing of the art is so all consuming that the rest is like a shadow world that doesn't really matter. Is the art great art?? Well, that is something I have no control over. I do the art the way it needs to be done, the way I have to do it. The best way I can do it. I have spent a lifetime studying art, trying to become a better artist, whatever that means. I have examples from the past of what great art is like and at the end of the day, if I can put a piece of mine on the wall next to
Picasso or
Michelangelo or somebody, and not feel that it is being blown off the wall, that is good enough for me. Do other people care or notice... well, I hope so, but if not, I can live with that too. I like getting art to an audience because, I think it is all about communication and a communication takes two people. But, whatever.....
Other people think they are geniuses, well, good for them,
George Bush thinks he is a great leader, the world is full of deluded imbeciles.. I cannot waste my time dealing with their bullshit. I guess that is why I am not an editor. It is notoriously difficult for an artist to properly value his or her own work, so, I will leave it up to others to decide if I am an "artist of great genius" as the very perceptive (hahaha) Mr. Brunton said, or just an untalented idiot as I often feel myself to be. Like
Popeye the Sailor, "I am what I am and that's all that I am." And, that is enough to get me through today.
Dee - You seem to have come to a place where you are at reasonable peace with yourself. At least, you are ‘philosophical’ about the state of the art world and don’t seem too unduly concerned that your work has been sidelined. I guess this is a place you have to get to if you want to carry on creating, because, lets face it, 99% of us artists and writers are never even going to earn a living by doing what we love, never mind having kudos and ridiculous amounts of cash heaped upon us from an adoring public.
When I was a young man, I really did believe I was destined for ‘greatness’ (and by ‘greatness’, I mean success - ie ‘fame and fortune’ - in the eyes of the world). I’m certainly not alone in having suffered that illusion. In my late 20s I suffered the pain of coming to terms with the fact that such dreams would never come to pass; and shortly afterwards my dreams evolved into more achievable, more realistic ambitions.
I decided I’d settle for a wee bit of happiness, a loving woman, a bit of foreign travel, publication in small press magazines, and, if I’m lucky, a couple of collections of poetry and a novel published. I’m lucky, in that I’ve now achieved all of my scaled down ambitions, and compared to who I was at 20, I feel really fucking blessed.
However, secretly, I still hanker after the kudos. It’s a compulsion I’ve got under control, but it’s there nonetheless. I actually feel embarrassed confessing this, because I feel, given that I’m 42 and I’ve kinda got things sussed in every other department of my life, I should have got my ego under control by now, eh?
So, what about you, Norman, does that little ego-demon still whisper sweet nothings in your ear... or have you got him chained and bound, eking out the last of his miserable days on a diet of bread and water in some dark, dank oubliette? If you have succeeded in vanquishing him, going to spill the beans and tell me how you did it? I’d like to know... and I’m sure many other fellow sufferers would too!
Norman - Through lots of experience living with chemically dependant persons, I came to familiarity with AA and I believe in the AA philosophy in the sense that I try to really understand what I can control in my life and what I can’t and to let go of the things I can’t control…. I really want to tell you that doing something “great” is not the same as being a celebrity, getting kudos.
Paris Hilton is a celebrity, beautiful, young, recognized wherever she goes, inherited buckets of money, would you trade places with her??
I have seen your amazing
drawings… I have learned a lot about art and drawing from looking at them… not to mention the real communications they make!!! I don’t know of any other work like that anywhere…. If I won the lottery, I would buy several of them…. To me, being able to do a drawing like that is so much cooler than being rich or famous or whatever…. It is the doing of it that equates to “greatness,” the rest is just celebrity.
To make money in the arts, you got to be able to hustle and sell, like
Leroy Neiman or
Robert Mapplethorpe… I read
Mapplethorpe’s bio a few years ago… I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to “make it” in the art world…. Which is really not all that different than making it selling used cars… Sometimes people like
Kurt Cobain or
John Lennon come along who can make really cool art that can be sold for piles of money…. Well, good for them but in visual arts, the money is being made today by New York dipshits, every bit as annoying as 19th Century academicians… and I have no interest in being a part of that….
If one of the dealers sells some or all of my art, cool, I will take the money, but it does not mean that I am any better of an artist or that the art is any more “great” or lasting… It is like if I had a big collection of snuff boxes that I had gathered over the years and wanted to see if I could get cash for them to retire on….
Back in the middle of the 1600s,
Rembrandt went broke, if memory serves me, and his household goods were sold at auction to pay debts…. If
Rembrandt could not “make it” what chance do the rest of us have???
My dreams and aspirations are simple and do not involve becoming a rock star… being alone with your pen and drawing board, you achieve greatness…if the audience is not there, maybe it is not your fault, the audience may never be there… well what control do you have over that?? Need to satisfy your ego?? Well, there are lots of ways to do that… walk naked down the main street of Glasgow tomorrow and I guarantee you will have your face on the evening news… if that is what you want… buy an expensive suit and get groomed like a wall street broker and walk around downtown with a brief case… people will treat you like you are king of the shitpile….until they find out that you don’t have money…
Poor people in America do that, they dress fancy and drive a fancy car because in our very mercenary society, those things command respect… whether you are an honest man or crooked as a wall street banker…
If you want to make it in the arts, in literature would seem to be the best opportunities… there is money to be made writing novels… but, you have to have work that will sell, crime dramas, for example with lots of hot sex and you have to have entry to agents and publishers…
Michael Crichton had his first manuscript read by some relative of his wife, I think it was, who worked at Doubleday…
It is not enough to have a good novel to sell, you got to get it out there… remember
John Kennedy Toole who wrote
A Confederacy of Dunces, one of the best novels of the 20th Century, he could not sell it and committed suicide over that, eventually the novel was read by a well known novelist/professor, who recognized it as great writing and had it published, it won a Pulitzer prize….
Submitting manuscripts to the publisher is a waste of time… I heard an executive at Viking say one time that in like 30 years, they had only published one unsolicited manuscript….
You need an agent and the right work and a lot of luck to make it…. The odds are actually worse in art, especially if you are not young and sexy… to “make it” in art, you really need to go to New York and make the rounds of all the galleries find out what they like, network, make contacts and then do some art that they will dig…if they want pickled cows in a bottle, give them pickled cows in a bottle…. Then make the rounds again and try to sell it to them….
It is like selling used cars and if you can give them a blowjob or a nice piece of ass, that never hurts (per the
Mapplethorpe bio) well, so much for making it in the arts… I would rather do what I do and be where I am…. I don’t much like social scenes in general and socializing with arts people is very much not my cup of tea….
Dee - Don’t know if you’ve got the equivalent over there in America, but here in the UK there’s a popular long-running radio programme called ‘Desert Island Discs’ where you choose your all time favourite top ten records, the ones you’d have if you were marooned on a desert island. As my final question, I’d like to pose a question that’s a variation on that theme. Imagine, you’re sentenced to life imprisonment in solitary confinement, but you’re allowed a film projector and one film, one book, a record player and one record, and one painting to hang on your wall. Which would they be, and why?
Norman - okay, thanks, this has been a really interesting and fun exercise... It snowed about a foot here yesterday. when I left work at 4:30 p.m., I was
telling all of the commuters I work with (most of whom live miles from the job site) how easy it was for me since I walked and did not have to deal with the traffic. I had forgotten how hard it is to walk in the deep snow and the walk almost finished me off (4.5 miles) and then when got home, I helped the guy downstairs finish shovelling the snow off the driveway and walk.... so, I have been getting my exercise in the last couple days.
Today is Saturday and my wife likes to go to the casino on Saturdays. I will drive her there and we will have a nice dinner at the restaurant... then she will play blackjack for about five hours and I will bring my little drawing board and find a comfortable place in the lobby to sit and draw.... seeing all of the people, there is always music playing, the light is good.... my kind of scene... anyway, thanks for being interested in my work and my thoughts...
I gave a lot of thought to your last question while shovelling the snow this morning.... I believe the record would be
'The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death' by the late
John Fahey .... the painting would be hard to select because there are many things I enjoy looking at and have looked at for years I think
James Ensor's
'Entry of Christ into Brussels' would be cool and though I have studied it for years, I still see new stuff in it... otherwise, it would be
Marcel Duchamp's
'king and queen surrounded by swift nudes' which I have also been looking at for years.... for a book, probably
Moby Dick, which I have read several times and still do not quite understand.... it is a very deep and mystical novel... I love movies and a passion for movies is one thing my wife and I share although in many ways, we are quite different as far as what we like and like to do, etc... not many films bear watching more than one time.... probably my favourite film of all time is
David Lynch's
Mulholland Drive, but to watch over and over, I would choose one of the
Pink Panther Comedies as I have seen them all many times and they still make me laugh.... well, thanks and take care.
© Dee Rimbaud & Norman Olson, 2005.
Artworks by Norman J Olson
