Word: art
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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HIGH SERIOUSNESS. Matthew Arnold, you remember, said the greatest art displayed a High Seriousness. That's not to exclude the serious masquerading as comic, or even the outright Slapstick farcical comic. It may not be the greatest art, Arnold said, but we-all-love-a-good-joke-hey-boys...
...serious and it's not serious." You understand? Of course. This kind of consciousness has produced a lot of the art of our time, playful art as I have called it. It includes Camp to start with though it is greater than Camp. It includes Pop Art. ("Why that looks like a picture of a soup can, Karen." "Well it is a picture of a soup can." "Oh.") But it is greater than Pop Art. Richard Lester is in the tradition. Bob Dylan is part of it; the Bob Dylan that Joan Baez called the Dada King. (Everybody Must...
THIS consciousness, which has as antecedents such early avatars, as Jean Cocteau, Dada, Joyce, and the Marx Brothers, is to say the least, playful. All art is, of course, to some extent, playful, or draws on elements of the mind that serious people don't take seriously, but these artists are more playful than most. A gallery instillation that has you walk down a long dark tunnel to confront a white painting with the words You Are Here neatly lettered in black, certainly is more playful than the Sistine Chapel. (It was done this summer in London by John Lennon...
...BEATLE who seems most interesting as presented in Hunter Davies' book is, not surprisingly I suppose, John Lennon. He displays a personality by turns ironic, tender, farcially funny, bitter, nasty, generous, and deeply despairing. His attitude towards the world, towards art, the Beatles, himself, his family, his past is always ambiguous, usually ironic and tinged with a definite sadness...
...George, who became the child's close friend, died when John was thirteen. At this time John's real mother reappeared, and she and John became extremely close: "She spoke the same language, liked the same things, hated the same sort of people." At about the time John entered Art College his mother was run over by a car and instantly killed. "I thought fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. That's really fucked everything. I've no responsibilities to anyone...