"X Girlfriend #14"
"X Girlfriend #14"
James W. Bailey
"X Girlfriend #14" was a frustrated conceptualist/performance artist
whose covert passion and mission in life was to play the role of art
critic assassin of film photography as a legitimate form of high art.
She edited an art zine in the mid-80s titled No La Hot Flash in which
she predictably railed against conservative Reagan-era politics and
the position of film photography as respected art. Our relationship
lasted about six weeks. It ended when she wrote and published an essay
in her zine personally blaming me for holding her back from becoming a
great artist - apparently the fact that I was a film photographer was
generating negative energy in her life at the time since photography
wasn't a real form of art in her opinion.
I nailed the following on her French Quarter apartment door after
reading her rebuke of me and of my first love in life, film
photography:
This is your third or fourth insane rant against film photography
that I've read in No La Hot Flash since I've know you. I gave you
the benefit of the doubt on the others, but must now speak out.
Your style of writing is shallow. It is meandering and vapid. It is
also terribly inaccurate in its discussion of what is presented as
facts about photography.
But its worst fault by far is that it is trivial. It seems to focus
more on your obsession with some fantasy you have about your
imagined talent as a conceptual artist as you suppose it relates to
and is reinforced by the work of your favorite gods' art, whatever
that art may be.
Your vain attempt to build credibility for your own art and art
criticism by endlessly pointing your readers to the opinions of D.
Eric Bookhardt (art critic for Gambit Magazine) only reveals how
desperate you are to be taken seriously as an art critic, as well
as how lacking you are in having an aesthetic vision you can truly
call your own.
The amazing irony is that your so-called conceptual work is as
devoid of serious and meaningful purpose as your so-called
"reviews" of photography exhibitions in New Orleans.
But what's most laughable is your suggestion that others are
responsible for your ignorance. It's truly amusing that you attempt
to blame the gallery press releases for your grade school errors
with the endless stream of basic errors you make.
You have exhausted several issues of No La Hot Flash telling others
what to think about photography, why they should think it and how
they should work with you to hasten photography's advance toward
the grave.
You try thinking about this:
Skill without imagination is dumbed-down craftsmanship and gives us
many commercially useful objects such as wickerwork cat nap
baskets.
Imagination without skill gives us the type of postmodern art that
amateur wannabe intellectually insecure artists believe in their
deluded dreams to be great art.
Lack of imagination and lack of skill gives us eternally visionless
amateur artists who have no other choice in life but to become
amateur art critics in order to be heard.
posted by The Right Reverend James W. Bailey at 10:31 PM
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