Got ’em by the donors

So… a strange (but relevant!) digression. All the chitter-chatter about the former president not being able to get good legal advice, I mean, the absurdity of that sentence alone.

Anyway, some possible reasons why: 1) he lies constantly, 2) he thinks he’s smarter than everyone – meaning he will get you in real legal trouble if you’re on the record representing him and 3) most important, you’ll get stiffed. So why would any attorney with federal court trial experience put their reputation on the line for any of that? The premise is self-refuting. And here’s where the green gets truly, unfortunately, meta.

He’s raising money on all this legal trouble he’s in – stolen docs, destroyed evidence, obstructing justice… and though it looks like its political fundraising, guess again. Winred is not ActBlue. The RNC is raising money from the gullible to pay his legal bills, causing them to also pull out of media buys for weak candidates, which is all fine with me, sure. But let’s call it what it is: green from the green to protect a racket of degenerate hucksterism.

Wasn’t it weird how fast the feds returned his passports? I mean, go already!

The ruin that crowns the rocks

VanGogh-View_of_Arles_with_IrisesFrom Volume II of the Complete Letters of Vincent Van Gogh, Vincent writing to his brother Theo from Arles, 26 May 1888:

My dear Theo,

I read an announcement in L’Intransigeant that there’s going to be an exhibition of the Impressionists at Durand-Ruel — there’ll be some works by Caillebotte —I’ve never seen anything of his, and wanted to ask you to write and tell me what they’re like — there are certainly other noteworthy things too.

I sent you some more drawings today, and I’m adding two more. They’re views taken from a rocky hill from which you can see in the direction of the Crau (an area from which a very good wine comes), the town of Arles and in the direction of Fontvieille. The contrast between the wild and romantic foreground — and the broad, tranquil distant prospects with their horizontal lines, shading off until they reach the chain of the Alpilles — so famous for the great feats of climbing of Tartarin, P.C.A., and the Alpine Club. This contrast is very picturesque.

The two drawings that I’m now adding afterwards will give you an idea of the ruin that crowns the rocks. But is it worth the trouble of making frames for this Dordrecht exhibition? I find it so silly and I’d prefer not to be part of it.

I prefer to believe that Bernard or Gauguin will exchange drawings with us in which the Dutch will see nothing.

Have you met the Dane Mourier-Petersen — he’ll have brought you another two drawings as well.

He studied to be a doctor, but I suppose he was discouraged in that by the student life, discouraged by both his pals and his professors. He never said anything to me about it, though, except that he once declared: ‘but doctors kill people’.

When he came here he was suffering from a nervous condition that came from the strain of the examinations. How long has he been doing painting — I don’t know — he’s certainly made little progress as a painter, but he’s good as a pal and he looks at people and often judges them very accurately. Could there be a possible arrangement whereby he could come to live with you? As far as intelligence goes, I think he’d be far more preferable to that Lacoste, of whom I don’t think highly, I don’t know why. You’ve absolutely no need of 6th-rate Dutchmen or worse, who when going back to their country do nothing but say and do idiotic things. A dealer in paintings is, unfortunately, more or less a public figure.

Anyway, there’s no serious harm done.

The Swede is from a good family, he has order and regularity in his means of support, and as a man he makes me think of those characters Pierre Loti creates11. For all that he’s phlegmatic, he has a good heart.

I plan to do a lot more drawing. It’s already jolly hot, I can assure you.

I must add an order for colours to this letter — however, if you’d prefer not to get them immediately I’d do a few more drawings and wouldn’t lose anything by it.

I’ll also divide the order into two according to what would be more urgent or less.

What’s always urgent is to draw, and whether it’s done directly with a brush, or with something else, such as a pen, you never do enough.

I’m trying now to exaggerate the essence of things, and to deliberately leave vague what’s commonplace.

I’m delighted that you’ve bought the book on Daumier — but if you could add to that by buying some more of his lithographs that would be absolutely good — because in the future Daumiers won’t be easy to get hold of.

How’s your health, have you seen père Gruby again? I’m inclined to believe he exaggerates your heart condition a bit, to the detriment of the need to treat you rigorously for your nervous system. Well, he’ll certainly realize it as you follow his treatment; with Gruby you’ll last, but unfortunately for us père Gruby himself won’t last, because he’s getting old and when we need him the most he won’t be there any more.

I’m thinking more and more that we shouldn’t judge the Good Lord by this world, because it’s one of his studies that turned out badly. But what of it, in failed studies — when you’re really fond of the artist — you don’t find much to criticize — you keep quiet. But we’re within our rights to ask for something better. We’d have to see other works by the same hand though. This world was clearly cobbled together in haste, in one of those bad moments when its author no longer knew what he was doing, and didn’t have his wits about him. What legend tells us about the Good Lord is that he went to enormous trouble over this study of his for a world. I’m inclined to believe that the legend tells the truth, but then the study is worked to death in several ways. It’s only the great masters who make such mistakes; that’s perhaps the best consolation, as we’re then within our rights to hope to see revenge taken by the same creative hand. And — then — this life — criticized so much and for such good, even excellent reasons — we — shouldn’t take it for anything other than it is, and we’ll be left with the hope of seeing better than that in another life. Handshake to you and to Koning.

Ever yours,

Vincent

I hope to have news from you tomorrow, otherwise I’d be in quite a tight corner as I only have money left for tomorrow, Sunday.

Image: View of Arles with Irises, May 1888, oil on canvas, Vincent van Gogh

On Cezanne

Rainer Maria Rilke spent much of 1907, from June to November, in Paris following the traces of one of the formative influences on his poetry, Paul Cezanne, who had died the previous October. In correspondence with his wife Clara Westhoff, Rilke wrote about many of the elements to making things; in these careful but free flowing love letters by any other name, he allows us a particular view toward the ramparts of the possible, the desperate, the beautiful and the audible truths that rise from great artists and art work. From Rilke’s  Letters on Cezanne, translated from the German by Joel Agee.

Monday, June 24

… This morning your long letter, with all your thoughts… After all works of art are always the result of one’s having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further. The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes, and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible, and as nearly as possible, definitive utterance of this singularity… Therein lies the enormous aide the work of art brings to the life of the one who must make it, —; that it is his epitome; the knot in the rosary at which his life says a prayer, the ever-returning proof to himself of his unity and genuine-ness, which presents only to him while appearing anonymous to the outside, nameless as mere necessity, as reality, existence -.

So surely we have no choice but to test and to try ourselves against the utmost, but probably we are also constrained to keep silence regarding it, to avoid sharing it, parting with it in communication before it has entered the work of art: for the utmost represents nothing other than that singularity in us which must enter into the work as such, as our personal madness, so to speak, in order to find its justification in the work and show the law in it, like an inborn design that is invisible until it emerges in the transparency of the artistic. – Nevertheless there are two liberties of communication, and these seem to me to be the utmost possible ones: the one that occurs face-to-face with the accomplished thing, and the one that takes place within daily life, in showing one another what one has become through one’s work and thereby supporting and helping and (in the humble sense of the word) admiring one another. But in either case one must show results, and it is not lack of trust or withdrawal or rejection if one doesn’t present to another the tools of one’s progress, which have so much about them that is confusing and tortuous, and whose only value lies in the personal use one makes of them. I often think to myself what madness it would have been for van Gogh, and how destructive, if he had been forced to share the singularity of his vision with someone, to have someone join him in looking at his motifs before he had made his pictures out of them, these existences that justify him with all their being, that vouch for him, invoke his reality. He did seem to feel sometimes that he needed to do this in letters (although there, too, he’s usually talking of finished work), but no sooner did Gauguin, the comrade he’d longed for, the kindred spirit, arrive than he had o cut off his ear in despair, after they had both determined to hate one another and at the first opportunity get rid of each other for good. (But that’s just one side of it: feeling this from artist to artist. Another side is the woman and her part in it.) And a third (but only conceivable as a test for the upper grades) is the complication of the woman being an artist. Ah, that is an altogether new question, and ideas start nibbling at you from all sides as soon as you take just a few steps in their direction. I won’t say any more about this today.-