The Naughty List

 

I've just watched a fairly old video of a YouTuber whose main interest is in the arts. I haven't seen enough of her channel to know what she does, but she's quirky so she has a lot of followers. In this video she gives ten reasons why she hates Picasso, the human, not the artist. If you know your artists then you are aware Picasso was a womanizer, a cheat, a cad, perhaps even a pedophile? 

In a corner of my apartment I have a lithograph supposedly by Picasso. He was a prolific artist, so I don't doubt the provenance.

My Picasso 

As always my response when someone is disgusted by the behavior of someone famous is, "My reading material, song list and gazing at beautiful works of art would be limited, severely limited, if I cancelled every artist who was an asshole.

It certainly is a conundrum. My favorite painting is, 'A Bar at the Folies- Bergeres,' by Edouard Manet.

The barmaid allegedly is also a prostitute, a favorite subject Manet used in many of his paintings, such as the controversial painting, 'Olympia,' where a nude woman looks directly at you, daring you to say something. The subject was more than likely a prostitute, and a very young one at that. Manet died in agonizing pain with syphilis. So, can we assume there was more than painting going on?

Throw away your Hemingways and Norman Mailers. Orwell was a socialist who turned on people he thought might be communist supporters, many of them Jewish, or people of color. Chanel, Walt Disney, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, all admired Adolph Hitler. 

Today we have Kanye, Mel Gibson, JK Rowling and numerous artists today who have made a mark in their field. Yet, they are the shittiest of shits. 

I don't know if geniuses, or extremely talented people have something in their DNA which gives them a special gift, and in return, they lose a part of their humanness.

Looking at the barmaid in Manet's painting, I wonder if he understood what he was painting? Did he ask her to pose as if the whole world was on her shoulders, that she had no chance of ever finding peace? For him it was probably a bit of a chuckle to see people gaze lovingly at his beautiful work, not knowing who his subjects were. The woman in the Folies- Bergeres says everything about her life in that thousand yard stare. It's haunting to me. 

There are a lot of artists who support the orange man. It's easy to avoid them because they really have no talent. As much as I despise Mel Gibson, I will still watch the movie, 'Signs.' I will watch Tom Cruise and read Rowling's, Harry Potter. 

We are flawed creatures, with skewered ideas and thoughts. Beauty and the Beastly sometimes go hand in hand.

Comments

ex-ferrer said…
Pretty much the same with me and with those same people, but I'll add James Woods and Jon Voight. If there's a story and they're in it, there's no denying they're doing a good job. Can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
July 2, 2025 at 9:18 PM
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