The $200 Million Used Mercedes
Talk about synchronicity. The invitation to John Richardson’s book launch on Picasso arrived the same day as Peter Arnold’s letter concerning the artist. Volume III, 1917 - 1932, was reviewed by William Boyd on November 3, in these here (The Spectator’s) book pages. The novelist loved it and eagerly waits for more. I like John Richardson, in fact I sat next to him at dinner one week previously, but do not like Picasso, hence I have not read the book, although the mother of my children bought it. The reason I did not attend the party for it, but sent my concubine instead, was the hostess, Mercedes Bass. I have known Mercedes forever. She was born Tavacoli, a Persian, then married Francis Kellogg, followed by the billionaire Texan Sid Bass. Until she struck it rich with Sid, Mercedes was a fun lady to be around. Then something happened. I suppose writing, as I did, that Sid Bass paid 200 million for a used Mercedes did not help. For some strange reason she was not best pleased. But I meant it as a compliment. Never mind. I am one of the world’s most misunderstood souls.
Mind you, Mercedes has not looked back since. In fact she might not be able to because of the hauteur of her gaze. At times she reminds me of Margaret Dumont, the lady who played it straight while the Marx Brothers performed their hijinks around her. The perpetually dyspeptic demeanor of a high society lady who has mistakenly found herself in a brothel. The trouble is that ladies who are well born usually burst into laughter on such occasions. Not our Mercedes. Yet one of the funniest sights I have seen was that of Jacob Rothschild playing Sancho Panza to her Don Quixote at some gallery while she inspected the available goods. But back to Peter Arnold’s letter.
Arnold is an artist, a German expressionist, like my son, who has recently completed a novel about charlatanism in British art, and whose introduction intrigued the hell out of me. The book is dedicated to the Turner Prize, The jewel in the crown of fashionable emptiness. The author-artist lives in Wales. The novel is called The Artful Game, and it begins with gangsters in America such as Pretty Boy Floyd and Bugsy Siegel. He then goes on to Sam Giancana, whom I knew as Sam Mooney, as did most of the Kennedys. Mooney was asked by Joe Kennedy for help when Joe’s son JFK was running for his successful presidential campaign. He got it in spades. Sam Mooney-Giancana was shot and killed in 1975. Here’s the good part. The ill-conceived American Cold War policy of accepting any kind of self- expression as art to combat communist restrictions on creativity led to the introduction of the Turner Prize and provided an opportunity for the Mafia amongst others to manipulate the art-market in a money-oriented society, always according to Arnold.
Although he had to change names once he wrote about living persons, I for one agree with him. There is no way crap such as Turner prize winners which have sold for millions cannot have been manipulated by Mafia-like groups. And even old Picasso agrees with me. Here are some of Pablo’s quotes: “From the moment that art ceases to be the nourishment of the best brains, the artist can use all the tricks of the intellectual charlatan. The refined people, the rich ones and the professional layabouts, only want what is sensational or scandalous in modern art. And since the days of Cubism I have fed these boys what they wanted and pacified the critics with all the idiotic ideas that went through my head. Whilst I amused myself with all these pranks, I became famous and very rich. I am just a public clown, a fair- ground barker. It is painful for me to confess this, but in the end it pays to be honest.” Bravo Pablo, is all I have to say.
Picasso was no fool. The above words were first printed in the American Mercury in August of 1957. Some of you may remember that H.L. Mencken was the editor of the American Mercury, a magazine that told it like no other. Picasso was 75 years old in 57, an age when one wants to come clean for good. Little did he know that he was to live another 16 years. Whatever I have against the artist is not particularly against his art, but the influence he has had on budding artists. Like, say, Andy Warhol, atonal music, and magic realism in literature, one can’t tell the real from the phoney, and I don’t care what the so called experts say. Most of it is total crap created with less effort than it takes to produce real crap after breakfast each day.
And now for the good news. Ted Kennedy is writing his autobiography and has all the ususal arse-lickers in a tizzy. There is an auction going on in Washington while publishers are killing themselves to land Teddy’s opus. I don’t blame them, but for one thing. Kennedy is as likely to tell the truth about abandoning a young woman to drown back in 1969, when he drunkenly drove off a bridge, than his buddy Bill Clinton is to open up about all the women he has harassed and abused. What I want to know is what is the use of paying millions to a celebrity like Teddy, only to get bland untruths in return? Politicians never tell the truth as it is. Imagine when they have the mists of time, power and money, to let them off the hook. I wouldn’t pay one red cent for it, but then I am a very misunderstood soul, after all.
Comments
Tell Mercedes I have a collection of the most perfect
Michelangelo and Raphael drawings extant. If you have
true aesthetic sensibilities, you will pay me
$15 million knowing that they are, indeed, perfect:
perfect copies, of course. But even as perfect
copies, they easily transcend 90% of what is being
produced today.
Unfortunately, some of your friends prefer crap and
are willing to pay millions for it: a shark in
formaldehyde [sounds fishy to me...]; blasphemous
crap only Noo Yawkers would look at twice; and all
the other serious, post-modern graffiti for which
Pablo, Jackson, and others can claim credit.
Sure, Pablo was honest; he made similar statements
every so often; but he kept on producing crap that
idiots still admire. All that we see today just
doesn’t measure up to the empire style of
Napoleonic France even though we have an empire.
As for Teddy’s book, well, what else is new? I am
certain I will not buy it just as I have not
purchased Bill or Hillary’s or Newt’s or Nancy
Reagan’s or any of ‘em. I see copies for a buck or
two and I have no trouble leaving them there. And
don’t worry about the “mists of time”; my experience
tells me that time eventually reveals all truths.
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loosely connecting picasso with kennedy by way of
a mercedes pun expresses rhetoric steeped in the art
of frivolousness and intrigue. Is mr T an artist
after all?
Like many artists, he identifies himself as a “misunderstood soul”, ( we anticipate
His still unpublished correspondences to his only brother, expecting the same love and
eloquence vincent expressed to theo)
The same anticipation cannot be said for his new foray into digital publication.
i am grateful for the venture,however,since he is beginning to express
consideration for others, in this case, trees.
Unfortunately, the bottom line for Top drawer is it will never attain the value
of a picasso.
Why?
Picasso understood creation, which means the destruction of established values.
He recognized Nietzsches famous “God is dead” to mean that God died of boredom
from what our minds had done with the creation-they had turned it into representation,
into names and forms-cliches. Which is more valuable? to henpeck people with entrenched
cliches or to free them from subjection to representation? His fluid forms and their
metamorphoses express the flow of life itself.Mr T needs to better understand Pablo and open
his top drawers to let some air in- or better, remove them entirely. If we are to
express the truth, we all must undress.
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Didn’t Picasso say that people who like his paintings must be masochists? I remember someone referring to Pablo as a “master caricaturist.” I guess that beats the ubiquitous canniness of Warhol’s pop puns. I also recall someone (Was it Truman Capote?) referring to Warhol as a sphinx without a secret. Well, it appears as if Picasso at least had his secrets.
@William T: I remember Mr. T cutting down trees on his estate in Lake Forest, Illinois, to the consternation of his neighbors. Is this the same Mr. T?
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That particular confession by Picasso, however realistic, is considered imaginary. It comes from the book Il Libro Nero (1951) by Giovanni Papini, a work of fiction. The hoax has been denounced numerous times, starting from 1955.
I think that your views are interesting enough; thus they do not need the support of apparently fake evidence.
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Picasso understood creation, which means the destruction of established values.
Creation means destruction. OK.
If we are to express the truth, we all must undress.
OK. I’m typing nude. And here is my truth.
What’n’hell are you smoking?
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Thank you Theodore Liakopolous, I wondered where that quote could be confirmed, and here you are. Kudos
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He recognized Nietzsches famous “God is dead” to mean that God died of boredom.
God doesn’t care anymore. Hes watched mankind destroy himself over and over and even destroyed mankind himself a few times and always he, because of his physical self and his non-physical thoughts desires material things and control of others and will war to do so.
Chaos is Gods order, not mankinds.
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Creation means destruction.
Ordo Ab Chao
This applies to the universe, the void in which we exist, and not to mankind, who conflates his material self with his aetherical soul.
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@ Spartacus
Brevity is the source of wit; nudity doesn’t hurt
either unless you’re sitting on cactus. Trouble with
nudity is it detracts from any serious thinking. I
noted long ago, in my misspent youth, that when I
went into a “gentleman’s club,” all rational thought
eluded me. The whole Idea that “creativity” requires
destruction is pure enlightenment-liberal-fascist-
marxist-noo-yawk elitist crap. It blends well with
some of the other canards: nudity/sensuality brings
us “closer to God.” Yeah, right, can I borrow ten
bucks? And chaos is not God’s order. I’m in my
underwear now but not for long.
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Magic realism is just the hifallutin’ name for fantasy.
You know, the stuff that Tolkien wrote. When it takes
place in commonplace surrounding it is called urban
fantasy and has many practicioners, such as Stephen
Brust, Margaret Lackey, and Tanya Huff, all honest
journeymen in the trade, who compete for the reader’s
beer money.
But since literary critics would not be seen reading a
fantasy (or sci fi) paperback, they call it magic realism.
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We have a contested fact here: Taki states that the Picasso confession comes from the August 1957 “American Mercury”, while his Greek cousin traces it to a 1951 book by Giovanni Papini. Who is correct?
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@ F.C.Kelly
Answer: Picasso!
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“ Creation means destruction. OK. “
lets look at duration, time…
past present future..
can the present exist without the past ending?
no
the present can only be created by the past dying.
and the same with the present and future.
we understand duration, the creation of time
through the act of creation and destruction.
lets look at thought...can one thought exist without the other ending?
thoughts are in duration...and within creation and destruction.
Life itself is a process of creation and destruction.
but you may have a fetishistic position on life.A fixation to
representation, to images, to something. Just because youre
naked, doesnt mean you are nude.There is a difference between
nakedness and porn.. Porne graphos: a concern only with surfaces.
youre just pornographic, without depth of understanding, like
most of the writing on this site.
but lets move on to naked truth
i said that present happens because past ends..
but did anything arise at all? ever? did time
“happen?” did something “happen”?
we need to analyze naked reality..as it is...not as we think it is.
Nothing ever arose at all...The past never was.
The future never is...and the present cannot be
found.
this is wisdom.. .go through
these proofs..
http://www.stephenbatchelor.org/nagarjuna/commentary.htm#19.%20Investigation%20of%20Time
or read charles genouds book,
“gesture of awareness”.
then this gem of stupidity followed by its retinue of
cliches..
“ The whole Idea that “creativity” requires
destruction is pure enlightenment-liberal-fascist-
marxist-noo-yawk elitist crap”....
hes right, ill let him autodestruct on that “creative” thought.
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I’m sorry Mr. William T. I haven’t
“autodestructed” yet but I am working on it. I keep forgetting the importance of Tibet on Western civilization. I stand rebuked; I shall think correctly in the future; but right now I have to get naked for a business meeting before something arises over which I have no control. But why bother? The future isn’t and I can’t find my knickers much less the present.
If you ever want to really know how a serious contemporary artist “thinks,”
please don’t waste your time with the
aforementioned elitist crap, try reading Point and Line To Plane by Kandinsky…
gems of stupidity notwithstanding.
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@William T: Oh my Gawd! Is this lofty Brooklynese philosophy? Illusionist fetishism? Or just mundane Schumpeterian economics? How would Squire Square Ball walk the line on this one? Lord Pom Pom, where are you? Give us succor.
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“ I keep forgetting the importance of Tibet on Western civilization. “
who said tibet? not me..zeno isnt tibetan..
heraklitus? not slanty eyed..though we cant be sure.. how about those phenomenologists? heidegger? real tibetan...nietsche..shopenhauer? ..sartre, nope...wittgenstein?
western philosophy? friend to wisdom..wisdom
isnt bifurcated..you seem to want to put things
in their place..but wisdome springs up everywhere...even in your drawers!
I stand rebuked; I shall think correctly in the future; but right now I have to get naked for a business meeting before something arises over which I have no control. But why bother? The future isn’t and I can’t find my knickers much less the present.
-not bad, actually.."let confusion dawn as wisdom”.
If you ever want to really know how a serious contemporary artist “thinks,”
please don’t waste your time with the
aforementioned elitist crap, try reading Point and Line To Plane by Kandinsky…
gems of stupidity notwithstanding.
ive read both point to line to plane and towards the spiritual in art...Kandinskys abstractions are essentially tantric..how?
all forms can be reduced to simplified eternal
forms..you have to be kidding...kandinsky IS
modernism..in the sense of overturning representational imagery entirely...he lived nearly a century ago...i wouldnt call him contemporary..and he is considered HIGH art elitist in other words...have YOU
read him? or do you just like the name, like picasso? try expressing the meaning ..and not
the title..and then we can have a conversation..
s this lofty Brooklynese philosophy?
-i live in hungary..im not even in the usa
could you save the knuckle dragging statements
for some other blog?
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I’m done here; I don’t have time to explain
the obvious; but I do have one final question:
Beszelsz magyarul te pokhendi hulye?
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Beszelsz magyarul te pokhendi hulye?
Ne nevez pökhendi hülyének!
És egyébként nem beszélek magyarul.
Ezt is segítséggel írtam.
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Most unfortunate. Now, I understand. With respect
to those requiring finality, I must state that your argument(s)
remind me of the sodomites who periodically claim nearly
every significant artist or genius as one of their own: i.e.,
Michelangelo, Leonardo, etc. Even the few who were pathetic
sodomites and were truly significant would have to deny that
getting porked by one of their own had little if anything to
do with their own artistic or creative genius.
Now you claim that Kandinsky’s abstractions are “tantric.”
So what if “all forms can be reduced to simplified eternal forms”?
It had nothing to do with the subject under discussion.
We were – or at least I was—discussing the thought processes of
creativity and I was disabusing you (and others of a
similar mindset) of the notion that “creativity is destruction.”
Besides being a worn out cliche, it is deceptive. The Renaissance,
Matisse, Vermeer, Velazquez, Goya, Poussin, Ingres, destroyed
nothing. Creativity does not require a reason or a theory to justify
its existence. It’s like a signature using an existing alphabet.
Erted?
Kandinsky is more than a modernist since he practically
invented the idiom. No one said he’s a contemporary though his
work remains very much so. Of course, I have read him; and I also
applied him to my own work. That’s only one of the many reasons
I know crap when I see it.
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As an epilogue to the commentary above I quote from the “Postscript” of Umberto Eco’s novel “The Name of the Rose” (under subtitle “Postmodernism, Irony, the Enjoyable,” Harcourt paperback, p. 530).
“The historic avant-garde tries to settle scores with the past….The avant-garde destroys, defaces the past: ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ [Picasso, 1907] is a typical avant-garde act. Then the avant-garde goes further, destroys the figure, cancels it, arrives at the abstract, the informal, the white canvas, the slashed canvas, the charred canvas.” Avant-garde manifests itself in Architecture as: curtain wall, minimal art, the building as barren box, pure parallelepiped; in Literature as: destruction of the flow of discourse (same effect achieved in architecture by eliminating ornamentation); in Music as: passage from atonal to noise to silence. Further down on same page: “The postmodern reply to the modern (modern follows avant-garde, per Eco) consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently.” Deleuze mentioned a few pages earlier (subtitle “Detective Metaphysic,” p. 525) in discussion on labyrinths.
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