I hate the term in her own right—as in “artist in her own right”—because it suggests that we are still bound to our overshadowed lives, like freed slaves. I hate the word muse, too, for the same limiting reason. We are both referred to as muses, and you have repeatedly been described as “a painter in her own right,” as I have. Why are some women artists seen for what they are uniquely? What is it about us that keeps us tethered? Both of our talents are entirely separate from those of the men we have been attached to—we are neither of us derivative in any way. Do you think that, without fully understanding why, we are both of us culpable?
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I sometimes wonder, though, how many times “rediscovery” can happen before we begin to grow tired of being constantly reacquainted with the figure of the neglected woman artist. But the narrative seems unlikely to wear itself out: it is already ubiquitous, continuing to find purchase across social media, newspaper columns, essays, and blogs, as well as a home in the mouths of well-meaning individuals. As Sara Ahmed writes, “the more a path is used the more a path is used.” The more we repeat the same narratives, the more they solidify into the only ways of thinking and speaking about particular issues—issues that lose their complexity as a result. ... The central problem with this narrative is its very clear limitations. As Cooper’s sarcasm suggests, the language in which rediscovery is couched is often about reorienting the individual artist, assimilating her into the canon of greatness, rather than actually dismantling the structures of power that have led to such women being ignored in the first place.
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Americans have powerful fantasies about what work can provide: happiness, esteem, identity, community. The reality is much shoddier. Across many sectors of the economy, labor conditions have only worsened since the 1970s. As our economy grows steadily more unequal and unforgiving, many of us have doubled down on our fantasies, hoping that in ceaseless toil, we will find whatever it is we are looking for, become whoever we yearn to become. This, Malesic says, is a false promise. While the book rarely veers into polemic, it has a strong moral-religious bent. It is an attack on the cruel idea that work confers dignity and therefore that people who don’t work—the old, the disabled—lack value. On the contrary, dignity is intrinsic to all human beings, and in designing a work regime rigged for the profit of the few and the exhaustion of the many, we have failed to honor one another’s humanity.
Charlie Tyson, "The New Neurasthenia." The Baffler, 3/25/2022.
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I have a confession to make: I do not work. I am on SSI. I have very little work value (if any), and I am a drain on our country’s welfare system. I have another confession to make: I do not think this is wrong, and to be honest, I am very happy not working.
Sunny Taylor, "The Right Not to Work: Power and Disability." Monthly Review, 3/1/2004.
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Throughout this period, Glass supported himself as a New York cabbie and as a plumber, occupations that often led to unusual encounters. "I had gone to install a dishwasher in a loft in SoHo," he says. "While working, I suddenly heard a noise and looked up to find Robert Hughes, the art critic of Time magazine, staring at me in disbelief. 'But you're Philip Glass! What are you doing here?' It was obvious that I was installing his dishwasher and I told him I would soon be finished. 'But you are an artist,' he protested. I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well and that he should go away and let me finish."
John O' Mahoney, "When Less Means More." The Guardian, 11/23/2001.
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Apart from this despair about money, there was a worse despair; the fact that having to devote so much energy and time to obtaining the very basic monies for living, there was little strength (let alone peace of mind) left for working on the books whose non-completion was daily haunting and tearing away at my mind. I was, for a period, reduced to a total feeling of inferiority, hating myself, placing no value on myself, lacking all confidence.
Kay Dick, Friends and Friendship, quoted by Jennifer Hodgson, "Dreadful Present." New Left Review, March 11, 2022.
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She would hold down this unremarkable job for the next 30 years, her employer a 'lodestar in a disordered existence.' ... Her work was dull, but it did not capture her mind–'I did not want a job where I had to use up my whole energy'–leaving her free to read, something she did omnivorously.
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How can you explain that a cultural phenomenon people know and love is really a cartoon version? And at what point do you give up and accept that the cartoon now has its own separate life?
Bee Wilson, "Too Specific and Too Vague." The London Review of Books, Vol. 44, No. 6, March 24, 2022.
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There’s an anecdote I’ve heard about Herbert Marcuse being interviewed at his home in La Jolla, California. The interviewer says something challenging, like, “Herbert Marcuse, you’re a Marxist thinker, but I’m looking at all this luxury. We’re lounging around your swimming pool. What do you say to that?” And Marcuse supposedly replies, “Nothing is too good for the people.”
Jude Stewart, "How to Choose Your Perfume: A Conversation with Sianne Ngai and Anna Kornbluh." The Paris Review, 3/23/2022.
“I was shaking,” she said. “I was just so furious.”
Found snapshot from the collection of Billy Parrott.
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