August 28, 2011
"I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want."
Said by the same person who said: "An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have."
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More bucolic wisdom from Manhattan.
As a married farmer I have long treasured Wendell Berry's great observation: Marriage and care of the land are each other's disciplines. Each makes possible the act of fidelity towards the other.
As we farm this incredible river bottom soil, were remindd repeatedly that the only reason it's here ... is that it eroded from somewhere else.
The combination of the two seems to say that the thing people need the least is unruined land. Or am I missing something (other than a brain)?
Warhol was a really fun guy. Or so my uncle said, who was part of the same literary crowd with Vidal, Capote, Williams and Warhol.
But this is the first time that I have read Warhol's quotes. He does think/talk like a really fun guy.
Human perceptions are the most intriguing mysteries of life in a creative world.
So when we see unspoiled land we see the art work of the creator, and not spoiling it is an art appreciation act.
What Meade does is also an art work that honors the creators work rather than spoil it.
Which is a paraphrase of Wilde's quote, "All art is quite useless."
@traditionalguy I highly recommend the book "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol."
I happened to be listening to a talk radio guy in Philadelphia about 20 years ago who had worked with Warhol in Indianapolis (or wherever) and he couldn't understand how Warhol was so esteemed.
He said Warhol was the most mediocre guy imaginable.
Which seems to fit here.
Gosh, class warfare. Do I need to buy more ammo? No, the gun safe is stocked full now. Maybe I'll go to the range and burn some.
so what qualifies as 'ruining' land? i prefer certain environments shaped by man. if most people preferred unspoilt fruited plans we'd all live in fucking wyoming.
@tradguy, i guess i wasn't as enamored of some of his quotes. pretty jejune stuff, but when you're world famous suddenly your quips get elevated to to some level of undeserved wisdom. good for him.
Oh my: I have a fenced back yard for my bigger dog, livin' out here in the country big dogs tend to get shot or poisoned. Since I fencedd the back yard I quit doing anything but lop down the trees that sprouted too close to the house so the back has returned to nature (and dog poop).
Here I thought I was just lazy in my old age. Now I discover that I am an artiste!
Wait 'til I tell my wife!
Word verification: ridfus...I got rid of a lot of fuss when I quit mowing and watering bacck there.
Oh my: I have a fenced back yard for my bigger dog, livin' out here in the country big dogs tend to get shot or poisoned. Since I fencedd the back yard I quit doing anything but lop down the trees that sprouted too close to the house so the back has returned to nature (and dog poop).
Here I thought I was just lazy in my old age. Now I discover that I am an artiste!
Wait 'til I tell my wife!
Word verification: ridfus...I got rid of a lot of fuss when I quit mowing and watering bacck there.
"want" and "need to have" are two different things
It's better to be an overrated mediocre guy than an underrated talent.
Joe Schmoe...You are correct that Warhol's aphorisms are mildly jejeune stuff.
He holds to a superficial point of view of everything.
But really good superficial can be a welcome antidote to profundities that pass for the present decades newest deepest philosophy, soon to be replaced by another deeper one.
But then, I am a stubbornly dull person myself.
"Everybody has a different idea of love. One girl I know said, "I knew he loved me when de didn't come in my mouth."
Hmmm. Well then. I suppose so.
"[H]aving land and not ruining it" is a very passive construction. It's a sentence which contains within itself the idea that action is ruinous, that the abstraction "land" starts out as beautiful art, and anything done to is at best neutral and oftentimes "ruining". What does Meade think as a gardener?
My neighbors who do nothing with their land leave it a noxious, hideous mess - it's the people who labor over their gardens and lawns and walls and porches that produce what little beauty there is to be found in this northern Appalachian hill town.
Oh, and don't blame Manhattan for Warhol's idiocies. He's the fault of my home town, Pittsburgh.
He also said this:
"What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coca-Cola, Liz Taylor drinks Coca-Cola, and just think, you can drink Coca-Cola, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the cokes are the same and all the cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."
Clearly written in the days before house brands and generic colas. Or, for that matter, the limited-edition cane-sugar sodas vs. the fructose crap the peons drink.
Well, that's not fair. I've seen cane-sugar Mountain Dew for sale in the local Dollar General.
Warhol's whole consumer complex just bored and irritated me. I don't understand why people used to fetishize mass goods on the one hand, and demonize them on the other hand. A material good is a material good, but it isn't a moral one, in either direction.
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