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October 09, 2005
Getting into trouble
Art is about passion, and so it follows great art is about great passion.
Passion isn’t something you can create or destroy; it’s just there, like it or not. It isn’t a part time thing. It isn’t a: get up have breakfast go to work switch on the kettle switch on the music switch on the passion make a cup of coffee make a picture paint till six turn off the passion go home have tea read the paper go to bed thing. You can’t take it or leave it – you live it.
So Victorian painter, Simeon Solomon ends up getting arrested for fucking his passion in a public toilet. He had to hide his most passionate pictures. For others their passion doesn’t get them arrested, and they can indulge it to the full, like the foot-fetishist who works in a shoe shop. For some it has a darker side.
It is difficult to be honest about what drives you, but Solomon couldn’t do it any other way.
“A century after his death, Solomon now seems more than ever a visionary, an artist who set an agenda. He drew things others hardly dared envisage; he made the act of making an image personal, and dangerous, and honest.”
Neil Bartlett writing in the Guardian – the full article’s here.
It is only a shame he lived at a time when his passion was thought immoral. Today we are luckier; though it is often hard to focus, because anything is possible in today’s critical climate, at least we have more freedom to explore our passions.
torso and hands, oil on panel 1200mm x 800mm
Posted by john at October 9, 2005 06:05 PM
Comments
the hands. they look broken. stiff. the rest looks delicious
Posted by: kiki at October 11, 2005 02:17 AM