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I'd rather read Rimbaud than something joyful and life-affirming
(Not wishing to kick teh corpse around or anything - this is kind of 'on-topic'-ish, hopefully.)
I'd tend to argue that all 'art' is by definition life-affirming, if not positively romantic in intent, because whoever's responsible for even the really dreadful stuff has taken the time and the trouble to write it down/play the piano/piss on the canvas or whatever on the (let's face it, often wildly idealistic) basis that somebody out there who they've never met, and probably never will, might be interested. Especially once the artiste involved gets to the point of trying to find an audience/get some money, and such. Regardless of what he did later, Arthur Rimbaud was (allegedly) prepared to go down on the later (deranged, syphillitic?) Verlaine for example, in the hope of improving his poetry, which can't have been pretty, at least according to the aesthetic standards of the time. I mean it must have been tricky.
Before it's anything else, and however much it might get perverted by the man, etc, 'art' is a means of communication, which would seem to presuppose a)an acknowledgement that there are other people in the world and b)there's an outside chance that they're worth talking to. Otherwise, what's the point? A thirty second thrash metal song about the utter futility of not killing oneself in the queue at KFC, or in the work-starters workshop, or in the lifts at Goldman Sucks (insert what personally terrifies you here) is still, I think, a fairly positive statement.
Any genuine nihilist would get hold of some money, get drunk and then go on a killing spree, or try to get onto the board of directors at Lloyds/TSB, alternatively - the last thing they'd do is sit around fretting in a room on their own with a bottle of vodka and, eg, a missing ear, with no particular pay-off forthcoming.
All of which is by way of saying that, IMVHO, there's no such thing as a solipstic artist - it's an oxymoron, that, and anyone who says otherwise is welcome to meet me in the car poark outside my local, at which point I dare say I'll fall over with sheer amazement at the injustice of it all. |
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