Art crowds

I am officially fed up blogging about Friday treats. They just are so repetitive, they ended up boring me. So anyway, tonight I went to this art exhibition of Fabian Perez, where the artist was. Lovely paintings, as expected, but it was so darn crowded. I saw the artist, but did not speak to him. I didn't want to look like a groupie. I didn't buy a painting either (surprise). It lasted an hour, but it made me discover something: I don't like art crowds. Being there reminded me of a quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray:

"You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. Whenever I have gone there, there have been either so many people that I have not been able to see the pictures, which was dreadful, or so many pictures that I have not been able to see the people, which was worse."

I guess there were plenty of people to see, but in the end they remained invisible, hidden by the crowd they were a part of. The paintings looked more alive.

Art, artists and Oscar Wilde

"From the point of view of the form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type."

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

This is from the much quoted Preface. Well, of course. I love Oscar Wilde's one and only novel. It is one of my favourite books. I could write pages and pages, posts and posts about the novel, I usually quote him from time to time, finding it difficult to write much about the whole book now (I did write an essay about it back when I was doing my degree, I got a really good mark). I find this particular quote very close to my own situation as a wannabe artist: I never managed to be a professional musician and I think it is because I lacked the discipline and the rigour. I never went very far as an opera singer either, even though I love to sing opera. I envy opera singers more than I envy other artists, I feel that they have something that I failed to gain. However, while I am far from an accomplished actor, I do find acting easier. I think it is because it is more instinctive as a craft. I envy actors too, but I don't feel the same distance between them and me.

I miss academia

It struck me today: I really miss my time at university, either as a postgrad or as a guy working there. I mean really miss it. I miss it because I don't debate literature at all these days, but I also miss the beat of university life. This was most likely my natural element, a time when not only I could go to bed late, but also work and live on purely intellectual (and often useless) concerns. Teaching literature was the best thing I ever did and the most pleasant thing I ever did professionally. But there were also the thrill of getting in the library (I love university libraries), having a beer and a meal after a seminar in the company of reknown academics, or the seminars/lectures I would attend just for kicks, being a total and unapologetic geek.

I remember during my year in Liverpool attending on a seminar on The Picture of Dorian Gray that didn't even have ten people in it. I popped in out of pure love for Oscar Wilde's novel. I learned little there that I didn't know already, but I was happy to discuss the subject with specialists of the field. I did the same with some history lectures/seminars, which I was formally invited to attend (being a medievalist). I have to confess that I think I preferred the one I attended to just for fun, even though I always find history fascinating.

I haven't done all this since Liverpool in fact, which saddens me. I came close to have a part-time academic job back in 2009, but didn't get it. Money wise I am better off now, and getting the job would have brought a whole deal of little troubles (I would have had to relocate, for one), but there are days I still wish I had got it. I think I was never quite comfortable with teaching in secondary school and below, having to spend time doing discipline and being forced to teach very basic stuff to pupils. But teaching literature, that was something different entirely and I felt like a fish in the water. Oh well, I can still attend seminars for fun if I really want to. I can still play at being an academic.

Quoting Oscar Wilde

Just because I haven't quoted him in a while and because he is one of my favourite writers who wrote one of my favourite novels, I thought I would quote the Preface again:

"No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express anything."

I strongly believed it when I first read it when I was sixteen, I still strongly believe it now.

Quoting Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my favorite novels, and since my brother has written an inspiring blog entry on Oscar Wilde, I thought I would quote Wilde's famous novel:

All art is at once surface and symbol.Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.