Chelsea Swan

I have been reading a fair bit of Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath recently. I may as well admit now that I read about 200 books a year. I also read alto of books about artists and their lives and love biographies. I love celebrity memoirs too. They are my guilty Pleasure. I have just done Lily Allen and Britney Spears books.

Back to the point. I find it very difficult to separate the art from the artist. It seems to me that their lives are expressed in the art, they communicate who they are through the art weather they like it or not. I think people who want to separate the two only want to do so because they don’t want their favorite artist to get cancelled.

Picasso was a prick. I don’t like him, don’t like his work, don’t think he is the big man, I think it was a cult. He wanted to hurt women and use them for his art, why would I then want to look at his art. I think being cruel, sexis, racist, homophobic, is the quickest way to ensure your art will be forgotten. it will be left behind as it loses its relevance. I am happy to think picasso will be a footnote if anything.

I love Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath. You would find it hard to seperate who they were from the art they made. Both have been accused of being racist. I don’t read that in their work. I am aware of what is supposed to be seen as racist but intent was not their and they lived their lives not in racist ways. However there are problematic instances. In comes my bias. I have so few women to look up to as artists, so few to read or look at their art that I do think I forgive them more than I would male artists. The scales are too harshly tipped. The standards for women so harsh. I will take any female who has created and I can identify with within reason.

It starts getting a bit more grey with Chris Kraus who is maybe a bit more problematic. However I loved her book I Love Dick. I never felt that I could identify with a women and how she felt and thought more. Is it about a very obsessive stalking relationship. Yes. Was that wrong. Probably. Do I still love it. Yes.

I can’t remember what my point was.