I was gaping in awe at the elephant in the room during this interview with Paul H-O, an artist and art journalist who has made a documentary about his 5-year relationship with Cindy Sherman, in which he garners the world’s pity by dwelling on how hard it is to be overshadowed by the Great Artist. Finally, finally, the damn interviewer asked H-O the question that really should have been up towards the front, especially considering how Sherman’s art examines gender and therefore there’s no way you can’t just ignore the issue.
For centuries women have gotten used to being the second fiddle.
I know. I know what it’s like to be second fiddle, and I acknowledge my inferiority to the greater body. But then, I got tired of it. I’m sick of fabulous people. It’s just a bunch of gas being blown up everyone’s skirt. If Sean Penn doesn’t know who you are, he’s not going to blow smoke in your face, but I don’t have anything to say to him, either.
Then that’s it. They don’t discuss what struck me as the major issue—the very premise of H-O’s movie would be laughable if the genders were reversed. Not that women don’t get to biography relationships they’ve had with Great Artists, but in order to make it interesting, and especially to get people feeling sorry for you, you got to come up with more than, “Well, people tripped over me at cocktail parties to talk to the Great Artist,” or “His Rolodex was like ten times fatter than mine,” both of which are examples of what made H-O so fed up with the relationship he had to get out. Female partners of male Great Artists tend to get the public’s attention and sympathy if their partners are drunks, abusers, try to shoot them, steal their work and pass it off on their own, seduced them when there was a huge age difference, or were otherwise weird men that are hard to tolerate. If a woman dared tried to scratch out the tiniest complaint about being overshadowed, she’d probably be called a whiner, and probably rightfully so to a degree. (I mean, you know what you’re getting into with your Great Artist lover.) The proper role of women who are coupled with Great Artists is to be quietly supportive, to the degree that women who merely buck expectations by having careers of their own that shine in their own right—even if they are less talented or famous than their husbands—open themselves up as targets for misogynist scapegoating by the public. Think: Courtney Love or Yoko Ono.
Not that I’m trying to bash this guy. He’s not doing anything outrageously sexist or cruel. He doesn’t demonize Sherman, though that’s something that does well at the box office. But it’s the whole situation where he’s getting sympathy and attention because he’s a man that had a role—second banana—that’s reserved for women. I don’t think he’d be getting attention otherwise.
70 Responses to “OMG role reversal”
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meh.
counter example:
1. Frida Kahlo
2. Billie Holiday
3. Tina Turner
Britney Spears and Maria Carey even… (not sure if it’s a great example, but definitely counter example) I tend to forgive artists and give them a pass no matter how fubar their life is. To me they are the explorer of human realm. They are not bounded by rules except imagination.
And Courtney love is a hack and a drug addict. She should learn how to play guitar first.
Actually, even when they *do* steal their work (F.L. Wright regularly lifted drawings from Marion Mahoney Griffin and she was a better architect than her husband whathisname) you still don’t learn the woman’s story.
regarding judd apatow (from that article link):
” But still, it was ugly and unnecessary. ”
that about sums up all his movies. and the ‘talent’ he gleaned from nice-try-but-still-woefully-subpar “Freaks & Geeks”, too.
it’s pretty telling that he walked away from that show with all the actors who were equally as talent-free & loutish.. who now, with a little of his clout, are getting a free reign to indulge themselves with their projects & make people likeme nauseated. i cant wait until their bubbles burst & they disappear. the amount of contortions people go through to validate apatow & ilk as women-friendly & sensitive makes me ill.
also: no, no, no; not courtney love. no matter how many articles have wanted to spin her into a misunderstood,second-chance star…she still is the biggest graspingly desperate starfucker with the thinnest scrim of talent. more like con artist. she doesnt get a pass just because she’s a woman or because people are rightly offended by her obnoxiousness.
“Not that women don’t get to biography relationships….”
Achh! The grammar, it burns!
Yoko Ono was both older and an established groundbreaking artist when she hooked up with John Lennon. Courtney Love, not so much.
That said, this reeks of the “whoh, I did a whole month at home with a baby while my wife worked” feature piece that wouldn’t be even yesterday’s news if the genders were reversed. Even then, men get to “pioneer” role reversals of what women have done as a matter of expectation for years. No wonder such “switches” are so exceptional in the eyes of media and culture.
My BF and I met in art school. Two years after we graduated we ran into an old teacher of ours at a galley opening. I’d mentioned before that this teacher was sexist in his critiques - the BF said he hadn’t noticed but acknowledged that it could be true.
A little background: BF’s an excellent artist, but I was the one who got the better grades, more attention, and was generally thought of as “better” (and BF, god bless his feminist heart, thinks so too and is cool with that). Also, at this point in our post-school careers, I had done much more professional work than him and gotten a fair amount of acclaim for it.
ANYWAY, our ex-teacher saw us and immediately warmly greeted BF, sparing only a nod and a “hi”, for me (and yes, it was apparent he remembered who I was). He spent the next 15 minutes talking EXCLUSIVELY to BF and not even LOOKING at me. BF kept trying to make me part of the conversation - after all, it was about post-school art careers, something I was more qualified at that point to talk about than him - but the teacher was having none of it, and directed all his questions to BF, never even glancing at me for all that time.
Eventually I very obviously disengaged myself from the conversation and went off by myself to look at the paintings, thinking maybe he’d get the hint about how rude he was being. He didn’t.
BFs reaction later was esentially “Holy shit, you were right, he is SO sexist.”
This long anecdote is basically to say that even if you ARE the “Great Artist”, some people just want to talk to the man.
In other words Paul H-O probably didn’t get NEARLY the shitty treatment that the significant others of of famous MALE artists get and he’s STILL complaining? STFU already.
I love how he is complaining about being overshadowed by her, while he’s simultaneously trading off of her name by making her the subject of his film.
Note also that while Mr. Second Fiddle may have been invisible at cocktail parties, but I somehow doubt that anybody ever expected him to whip up and fetch a round of drinks so the Important People could socialize unimpeded by self service.
Such service is frequently and wordlessly expected of the vagina bearer in a duo.
That H-O guy isn’t terribly relevant, page filler. Is his docu. any good?
Incidentally, I think this is the very first time I actually like an image pandagon post.
also: no, no, no; not courtney love. no matter how many articles have wanted to spin her into a misunderstood,second-chance star…she still is the biggest graspingly desperate starfucker with the thinnest scrim of talent. more like con artist.
Live Through This is a brilliant album. Sorry if you can’t see that.
Back on-topic:
Yep. Not to mention that Sherman has been a well-known artist for years now (I remember viewing her work for a class back in the late 1980s) so it’s not like he even has the “I supported her through her early days and all I got was this lousy documentary” complaint.
Remember when Joyce Maynard revealed the fact that she’d had an affair with JD Salinger in her 20s and was basically ripped apart for DARING to write unflattering things about him? I have a sneaky feeling this guy isn’t going to get anything close to the same treatment that Maynard did, and Maynard was a published author with several successful books (including To Die For) before she wrote her memoir, so it was hard to argue that she was merely feeding off Salinger’s fame the way this guy seems to be feeding off Sherman’s.
The proper role of women who are coupled with Great Artists is to be quietly supportive, to the degree that women who merely buck expectations by having careers of their own that shine in their own right open themselves up as targets for misogynist scapegoating by the public. Think: Yoko Ono.
All I would have asked of Yoko is that she not break up the Beatles.
All I would have asked of Yoko is that she not break up the Beatles.
Hopefully that was a joke - Yoko so did not break up the Beatles.
Wow. If only I’d known 20 years ago that supporting your significant other in her career even when it was a bigger career than yours was a big deal, I’d be famous by now. Or already had my 15 minutes. Or something.
Back then it used to be a consoling thought that eventually all the sexist assholes were going to get old and die. But we just keeping breeding new ones.
Interesting article Amanda, thanks for pointing it out. By any chance did you get to see the show “WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution” while you were in New York. It is a really great show, particularly the amazing collection of video and film work by female artists including some by Yoko Ono.
Nico, I think we may be living the same life. My husband (who I met in art school)gets irritated on my behalf but I usually make a pathetic attempt to excuse the rudeness with a claim that he(my husband) is just so much more personable than I was/am, so no wonder I am ignored.
Finally, on the subject of Courtney Love why is a woman’s ambition always described as grasping? I bought Hole’s first album the day it came out and I vividly remember some jerk of an art student who used to hang around the art department trying to play guitar mocking me for listening(on a sony walkman!) to it. “The bitch sucks but at least she got the band name right”
I wore that tape out.
Where did the photograph you’re using in this post come from?
It’s Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Still #3″. I think you can find it in the MOMA collection.
Mnemosyne May 2, 2008 at 7:49 pm
Live Through This is a brilliant album. Sorry if you can’t see that.
cheap clone of nirvana. (asking for it?, softer softest = Nirvana) Without Nirvana, Hole is nothing.
Her much under appreciated/ more deserving recognition contemporary: Free Kitten, Throwing muse , L7 (not my fav.), Breeder (ever so fleeting) Or ut (from the 80’s, definitely more significant early no wave all female group). There is joan jett, the obvious.
the blog to see for entire post punk/no wave
http://www.warpedrealitymagazine.com/
Worst of all, the “I lived with Cindy Sherman and wasn’t man enough to overcome the Ronald Reagan trap” has already been done by another film school loser ex of hers. What a deuce, I mean douche.
You’ve never heard of Diego Rivera, have you?
Ike Turner used to beat the shit out of Tina Turner. As did Holliday’s men. How many male artists’ women do that?
And if anything artists should live up to a higher standard of behavior, not get an asshole license. The mindless belief in the superiority of artists is one reason why the arts are full of the biggest fucktards in the world.
Like that pedophile Roman Polanski, still so beloved because he is a Great Man Of The Arts.
Oh, don’t get me started on Polanski! Convicted rapist who can’t come back here or he goes to jail.
“Oh, but his victim forgave him!”
WFT does that have to do with anything. Good for her. I’m glad she’s recovered from the assault. But her fortitude has nothing to do with him. The fact that she’s managed to have a ‘normal’ life doesn’t make what he did (drugging and raping a 13 y/o) even remotely okay.
And Yoko didn’t break up the Beatles. That was all John and Paul fighting over commercial and creative control.
Like that pedophile Roman Polanski, still so beloved because he is a Great Man Of The Arts.
Hey, Psychic TV didn’t give him a pass. Go take a listen to their “Roman P”, the Fireball remix.
“Live Through This is a brilliant album. Sorry if you can’t see that. ”
youre not sorry; youre deluded.
what squashed said. yeah, i had that CD, too (i won it). yeah; it was listenable –for the reasons that squashed gave. you’d be a grade A moron to think that the songs sprung from the dirt of any of her previous work.
and again, she dosent get a free pass based on her vajean. she happens to be one of those famewhores -of either sex- who glom onto another person’s talent & use it for their own gains.
she’s not ‘grasping’ because she’s a woman; she’s grasping because nearly every fuckin move she’s made since she’s been in the public eye (yes; even before cobain) is to hoist herself into the spotlight, no matter how dubious the talent & pathetic & desperate she looks/is. maybe she feels she is entitled to flail around & we should all be interested in her drama, but it’s based on nothing legit, since there’ not much more to her than what you see. and what i s see is obnoxiousness on the level of someone like a …who was the guy who married liza minelli?
the fact that some pig of a frat boy made a slur against her (as a woman) doesnt increase her talent or legitimacy one iota. like someone else said, yoko might have used a little of lennon’s spotlight to get her views on art, society, the war, etc.. out there. but she didnt ride his coattails into a …oops, ok…she did ride it into a bit of a recording career (i use the term loosely). these two PEOPLE are not very good examples
but they are ONLY two people! thank god…
How are Kahlo, Holiday and Turner counter-examples? Amanda’s arguing the world doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for female artists who are overshadowed by their more famous husbands or boyfriends. Whereas, somehow H-O gets a public hearing just because he felt slighted by Cindy Sherman’s colleagues.
Did the partners of Kahlo, Holiday and Turner get ignored or derided as whiners when they tried to complain about being overshadowed? I don’t think they complained. Now, it’s hard to prove a negative. Maybe they complained bitterly and nobody cared enough to record their sob stories for posterity.
Nancy May 2, 2008 at 10:21 pm
And if anything artists should live up to a higher standard of behavior, not get an asshole license. The mindless belief in the superiority of artists is one reason why the arts are full of the biggest fucktards in the world.
Artists are not average person. Majority of the greatest artists are pretty twisted bunch, some of their creation are illegal even. Never mind their behavior.
The strange inner working of artistic mind manifest itself in unusual relationship. It’s useless to try to categorize them then trying to derive a universal theory of social behavior.
Plus who wants to see well behaving polite art? That would be a boring kitsch.
Lindsay Beyerstein May 2, 2008 at 11:16 pm
How are Kahlo, Holiday and Turner counter-examples?
Diego Garcia was much older and was an establish muralist and painter before Kahlo was recognized. Their relationship is complex, full of turmoil and other people. Both have relationship with other women and men. More importantly I would argue currently Kahlo’s work is much more known than Diego Garcia’s work.
Billie Holiday. Do we even know men and women she has relationship with? Do we love Lester Young’s work more than Billie’s tune for eg.? (Anybody know if Kahlo had a relationship with Billie? anybody care?)
Tina Turner. How wouldn’t it be counter example? Ike and Tina started out as a band (Ike was the lead). Stormy relationship, alcholism, drug (both), beating up. Tina decided to sober up and do it on her own. Guess who was a footnote of rock n roll and who is the R&B legend?
etc, etc… (The women above are all much greater artists then their partners who in the beginning has more established names)
or who created who (Serge Gainsbourg and all his famous women, or Sophia Loren & Carlo Ponti)
wanna flip the gender? (Miles Davis vs. Betty Davis.)
Great artists are complex people. Much bigger than any theory can fit. That’s the point of creating great art. (call me romanticist.)
Nancy May 2, 2008 at 10:21 pm
And if anything artists should live up to a higher standard of behavior, not get an asshole license. The mindless belief in the superiority of artists is one reason why the arts are full of the biggest fucktards in the world.
Artists are not average person. Majority of the greatest artists are pretty twisted bunch, some of their creation are illegal even. Never mind their behavior.
The strange inner working of artistic mind manifest itself in unusual relationship. It’s useless to try to categorize them then trying to derive a universal theory of social behavior.
Plus who wants to see well behaving polite art? That would be a boring kitsch.
Artists are not average person. Majority of the greatest artists are pretty twisted bunch, some of their creation are illegal even. Never mind their behavior.
The strange inner working of artistic mind manifest itself in unusual relationship. It’s useless to try to categorize them then trying to derive a universal theory of social behavior.
Plus who wants to see well behaving polite art? That would be a boring kitsch.
I kind of disagree with both of you; I am generally annoyed at the pedestal that artists are put on, and I personally put artists at the level of industrial designers or engineers. And I get annoyed at that “tortured artist” trope that is thrown around-on average artists tend to be more neurotic then the average person, but I’m sure that if you were to track the percentage of artists with mental disorders and put it up against the normal people, the difference would be really insignificant.
But at the same time, if an artist gains great acclaim in spite (or because) of the fact that they were a douchebag who would scream scream curse words at old ladies more power to him/her. Nice is for Denny’s waitresses, not for people who I throw money at to entertain me.
Lindsay Beyerstein May 2, 2008 at 11:16 pm
How are Kahlo, Holiday and Turner counter-examples?
hmm, I think I lost my post a quickie recap
- Diego Garcia was older and already established before Kahlo. Their relationship was complex and involved a lot of people and event, at any rate, in the end arguably Kahlo is more famous.
- Billie Holiday. nobody remembers her relationship with anybody. It’s just her, Lady Day. (eg. Lester young, or J. Baker, Kahlo even…)
- Tina. (they started out as band, with Ike leading. alcohol, drug, beating. Tina sober up and start a much bigger solo carrier.) I am not sure if Ike was deemed whining or not. But his start was definitely dimming after Tina left. Nobody cares.
(various other example that is more difficult to determine. Serge Gainsbourg , Sophia Loren, Betty Davis. Who created who, who overshadow who… etc)
Can someone squash Squashed please?
Wow, you are so right, three questionable counter-examples TOTALLY invalidates the point of this post. Three is exactly equal to… um… hundreds? thousands? of the opposite (and in the case of your examples, ‘opposite’ is dubious) makes everything exactly even.
Holy fuck, if I hear this argument applied to one more situation I think I’m going to break something. Perhaps I will do a Google search on, I dunno, ANYTHING and then I can trash my fucking apartment.
Holy crap my grammar/spelling/train of thought suck when I’ve been drinking.
Oh joy, another article/documentary to remind the little women to NEVER OUTSHADOW YOUR MAN, for his precious little ego CANNOT TAKE IT. Remember girls, you can only date up, or you can do nothing at all! Otherwise his dick will shrink and he will dump you! (Or film you, in this case.)
Honestly, he knew what he was getting into when he got involved with her. He sounds like a medium-sized fish in a small pond when they met, what did he expect to happen dating someone famous? Um, DUH, that’s the price you pay to stand next to her fire at cocktail parties. Women have done that for-fucking-ever. I’m supposed to cry “Oh, you poor baby, you and David Furnish?”
Squashed, it’s Rivera, not Garcia.
And can we please stop talking about Frida Kahlo? She WAS overshadowed by her famous artist husband, despite being a great artist in her own right.
She’s not the exception to the rule, she’s an EXAMPLE of it.
google fight: (not a definitive, but one fun way of looking at it.)
1,530,000 for Diego rivera
2,060,000 for frida kahlo
I meant during their lives. sheesh.
Diego Garcia is an island in the Indian Ocean.
Sure, Kahlo’s hot now, but Rivera was the big enchilada at the time.
The really bad news is when the creator becomes famous and dumps his first wife (and sometimes collaborator), examples including Einstein and Bertrand Russell.
On the other hand, you have couples like Robert & Clara Schumann. He couldn’t be a piano virtuoso, so he married one. Or Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya.
Sure Diego Garcia is more famous now, but within the Chagos Archipelago, Danger Island has by far the coolest name!
hole’s first album came out before courtney had even met kurt, and was critically acclaimed. before hole formed courtney was in bands with kat bjelland of babes in toyland and katastrophe wife, and who is also amazing. courtney earned her fame. she may be fucking crazy, but shes smart and talented and a fantastic lyricist.
also, i have a sneaking suspicion that while john lennon may have known how to write a fantastic pop song, yoko ono may very well kno the meaning of life.
also, amanda, thank you for this post. the plight of the great white male artist has been shoved down my throat all semester and im effing sick of it. cindy sherman is fantastic, fuck this guy.
bad Jim May 3, 2008 at 12:57 am
Sure, Kahlo’s hot now, but Rivera was the big enchilada at the time.
yeah yeah…, without diego, kahlo couldn’t possibly get paris surrealism circle recognition or an exhibition in NY. Both are key to her work being known world wide.
jessilikewhoa, lord seitan May 3, 2008 at 2:47 am
hole’s first album came out before courtney had even met kurt, and was critically acclaimed.
( Love met kurt in 90, Hole’s first album is in 91. By then Nirvana has been an underground legend. Hole is nobody. Kurt died in 1994. Guess who produces Hole’s first album .. Most people don’t even consider Love is a member of babes in toyland)
In 1989, Love taught herself to play guitar and set out to form her own band. To do so, she placed an ad in an issue of Flipside, to which Eric Erlandson replied. Love and Erlandson co-founded Hole and are the only two members to remain constant throughout the band’s history. The group made their first gig in November 1989, after three months of rehearsal, and quickly started releasing singles on the Long Beach, California, independent label Sympathy for the Record Industry. The band’s debut album Pretty on the Inside was released in early 1991 on Caroline Records and was produced by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and Don Fleming of the band Gumball.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtney_Love
Nico May 3, 2008 at 12:38 am
I meant during their lives. sheesh.
by that measure she is pretty lucky since most key surrealism players get no recognition until much later outside the circle.
It’s very interesting that, in response to this post about a mediocre male artist whining because he was rightfully overshadowed by his phenominally talented female SO, this thread devolves into a slam of Courtney Love, another woman artist. Just sayin’.
The guy is some random dude dating famous photographer, interviewed by salon.com.
Who cares … He can drop dead right now or spontaneously combust, people will still not care.
CL. Do you now courtney love controls all nirvana’s albums and others band members has none? The fucking druggie then sold the right to Geffen. This is from a band who fight its entire existence for indie (nevermind having a lot of angst over last album release that involved talk of “being sold out”.)
And she sold the album right to GEFFEN? WTF. Is her cocaine stash running that low already? (And what has she done on her own? That right, the label drop her pronto because her album is not moving.)
And people want to defend her?
Don’t forget, she drove Kurt to suicide and is now living off the profits from his work, to which she contributed nothing. Also, she’s a crazy bitch, so she’s evil. That’s pretty much the gist of these comments.
I’m always fascinated by how people will seek reasons to dismiss Courtney Love, but won’t see that those reasons apply equally to Kurt Cobain.
“Leached” off (i.e. inspired by and worked with others)? Cobain would have been nothing if he hadn’t been influenced by all sorts of bands in the area, especially the Melvins. In fact, Nevermind was a huge pop hit mainly because they had Butch Vig on production, and he can turn muddy, grunge sounds into pure pop beauty. Vig also worked production on various Smashing Pumpkins albums, and Love had an affair with Billy Corgan—in other words, if you’re going to fault Love for working her networks to improve her career, you have to fault Cobain for working the exact same networks.
Drug addict/hysterical personality? Cobain was such a self-involved addict and hysterical personality he killed himself after escaping from rehab. Love has done some terrible stuff, but nothing that terrible.
Bad mom? Well, she didn’t kill herself, that’s for sure, so she’s got a leg up on Cobain in the parenting department.
Comparing Live Through This and Nevermind, or even In Utero, strikes me as a bad idea. The albums sound very different to me, and could only really sound very much the same to someone who hasn’t listened to any other punk from the late 80s/early-to-mid-90s. Sure, they sound alike if you only listen to Top 40 stuff, but Nirvana’s stuff veered from Pixies-esque to this strange sort of melancholy and Hole was like a cross between riot grrl and the Smashing Pumpkins.
squashed, I’m really going to have to ask you to cut your comments to a half or third of what they are, because people are asking me to ban you. You’re not a bad person, and I don’t want to do that, but it’s getting obnoxious.
As crazy as Love has behaved since Kurt died, I’ve had some degree of sympathy for her.
It can’t be too cool to have your husband shoot himself at the peak of his career, leaving you to raise your 2-year daughter alone.
Nobody is really prepared for fame, and Love was probably less prepared than many (as was Kurt).
Francis Bean Cobain is now so reminiscent of her father it’s scary, and Nirvana is at least as popular now as it was at Kurt’s suicide.
Combined with the money, the public profile, etc., that’s a hell of a lot of shit to deal with…
Funny thing about this thread is the lack of comment on the pandering to the Great and Famous. Here in Whitest Whitesylvania, many lads join the high school football team to get some of that adulation and the hangers-on. You seem indulgent towards those that attach to others more notorious.
Why should we weep when those whose entire career consists of leeching or mooching are let go? I suffer more for the person that did the supporting druing the buildup and then was cast aside.
Courtney Love and Cobain were talentless hacks that benefit greatly from the herd mentality and clueless tastes of the ‘Merican public. Waste your money on them but I found it absurd that the Weird Al parody was both more meaningful and better music.
You know, being a fame whore and being a successful artist are not mutually exclusive. For me, Hole’s material has aged better than most of Nirvana’s (with a few obvious exceptions). But Love cleary is a fame whore (and I wish I could think of a better term for it), to the point where I think she’s crippled her own career.
Having been a (half-assed) musician myself, I’ve come to believe that a lot of the bad behaviour we see from artists and musicians is a result of the fact that they can usually get away with it. People tend to be more indulgent to musicians and artists (or at least people in their social circles). We also tend to reinforce this behaviour pretty consistently. Who’s on the news or in the blogs all the time? The fame whores.
Another aspect is that there are thousands of wannabes trying to get the ‘big break’ or ’stay relevant’. One way to stand out (sans talent) is to be the biggest wanker.
We all eat up tales of rock bands tearing up hotel rooms. We worship at the salesmanship of modern artists. We eagerly devour as much dreck about Britney 1.0, Britney 2.0, and the rest as can be printed.
It isn’t indulging in petulant, childish behaviors as much as marketing. The latest freak show is what captures our ever diminishing attention span.
It’s about the money. Rock pays far besser than most other forms of music. Modern art pays besser. To keep the money rolling in, you have to be the most current trendy thing. Who buys English folk tunes? Who buys from local artists?
cheap clone of nirvana. (asking for it?, softer softest = Nirvana) Without Nirvana, Hole is nothing.
Ah, yes, the old “But Kurt must have written her songs for her, because they’re too good! And Billy Corgan must have written the songs on Celebrity Skin, because they’re too good!” When she brings out another album and it’s good, which man is going to get the credit for it instead of Love?
You’d think that having multiple good albums would show that Love can actually write songs but, nope, it’s all due to the men in her life doing all the work for her. No sexism there, no sir.
Frankly, given the career that he’s has post-Nirvana, I’m suspecting that Dave Grohl really got shafted on the credit for Nirvana’s success and that Cobain was overrated in his importance to the band, to say the least.
Having been a (half-assed) musician myself, I’ve come to believe that a lot of the bad behaviour we see from artists and musicians is a result of the fact that they can usually get away with it.
Case in point: Marlon Brando. He did things because people let him get away with them, and he wanted to see how far they’d let him go. Does that mean that he was a terrible actor? No, it means he was a great actor but also an asshole.
“Her much under appreciated/ more deserving recognition contemporary: Free Kitten, Throwing muse , L7 (not my fav.), Breeder (ever so fleeting) Or ut (from the 80’s, definitely more significant early no wave all female group). There is joan jett, the obvious”
Comparing ut to hole is like apples and oranges but hey squashed thanks for the male IMS approved list of female musicians. How silly of me not to realize that women need to keep that anger restrained and cool. Love just sounds so bitter and humiliated. Of course it is possible that that is why some people like her music, it’s cathartic in a way that maybe you just don’t get.
Ok I can’t help but set the record straight on the Kahlo/Rivera story, which some commenters have already noted, but I think its worth a longer explanation. During Kahlo’s life, she herself demeaned the quality of her own work compared to Rivera’s. She would say that he was really the important artist. As many people have noted, she did this as a kind of survival mechanism, to make her relationship with the Great Male Artist work. This is a pattern that many woman artists in relationships with male artists experience. I am thinking of Leornora Carrington and her brief relationship with Max Ernst when she was young. He treated her like a child, demeaned her, appropriated her iconography without recognition, wrote an intro to one of her books essentially calling her an idiot, etc… And the worse part is that Carrington, despite doing so much work throughout her life, is ONLY recognized in relation to Ernst, the older artist who abused her in order to raise himself up professionally.
In response to a very early comment, no I don’t think artists get a pass because of what they create. That creates a dangerous mythology about artists that is sexist, racist, and allows horrible cycles like Rivera’s and Ernst’s abuses of their partners to become part of their Great Artist Genius mythology.
As for this interview, it bothers me also that gender was such a small portion of the topic covered, especially considering that Sherman takes gender issues head on so much in her work.
And Amanda, you said, “If a woman dared tried to scratch out the tiniest complaint about being overshadowed, she’d probably be called a whiner, and probably rightfully so to a degree. (I mean, you know what you’re getting into with your Great Artist lover.)”
No, no, I absolutely disagree. It is NOT rightfully so and it is NOT her fault for knowing what she is getting into! Many people date other people within their professions because they have so much in common. In the arts, probably even more so than other professions, the assumption that the man is the superior artist permiates social conceptions. This is exactly what happened in the relationships with Kahlo/Rivera and Ernst/Carrington, as well as so many more examples it would be useless to list them all. Women artists make one THIRD on average what male artists make. Because of the ideas we as a society have built up about the Great Artist, that person is necessarily male. Only a small handful of women artists compared to male artists get any recognition, such as Kahlo and Sherman, and they become kind of token women of the art world, representing a false diversity in the arts. Essentially it is impossible for a woman to make it. To say that it is rightfully so that a woman partner of a Great Male Artist is justified and she should know better is a shitty shitty thing to say…
It seems to me that the “understandability” of being overshadowed in a relationship between two artists is going to depend on the relative magnitude of the talent and/or fame of the two artists. A truly great artist is going to overshadow most of his or her potential mates. How many artists wouldn’t have been overshadowed if they’d been married to Pablo Picasso? Not too many. It’s obviously unfair if a man overshadows his wife if the two are of roughly equal talents (and especially if she’s more talented than he is).
And just once I’d like to be able to blaspheme properly without getting rejected the first time!
Nirvana/Hole= meh, I think they are both incredibly overrated. If we are going to the play brilliant 90s couples who made great albums game I’d much rather: Blur/Elastica/Suede. Justine Frischmann dated Brett and founded Suede with him. Later she left him and dated Damon Albarn of Blur. All three groups made great albums but Elastica is often not given the credit they deserve.
Anywho, I agree with Marissa that artists do not get a free pass in terms of ethics, etc. Artists are not above and beyond the rest of humanity, that’s just an outdated Romantic/Modernist sentiment. That said I don’t think that if a great artist happens to be an evil asshole , he/she will be any less of great artist because of it. Its just that they will be a great artist AND an evil asshole as opposed to just being a great artist.
Nirvana: a good band with talented people (WTF, Mold? and I don’t even like them that much), but if Nirvana “changed your life,” I don’t want to hear about it, and nobody else does, either.
We all eat up tales of rock bands tearing up hotel rooms. We worship at the salesmanship of modern artists.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with admiring the salesmanship of modern artists– in fact, admiring it and encouraging it is probably a good thing, since it’s the only way to make a career out of being an artist: you’ll have few opportunities to produce works in isolation without engaging in the active promotion of your own work.
As far as rock bands tearing up hotel rooms? Well, so do adolescents when they pack hotels during conventions, but lacking access to mass amounts of alcohol, drugs, and groupies, they tend to do comparatively less damage.
It’s about the money. Rock pays far besser than most other forms of music.
I find that difficult to believe. The median rocker with his own band (even a signed one) probably makes a lot less than a unionized classical musician of your local philharmonic.
squashed:
Squashed, I say this as someone vigorously trained in the arts: You’re completely and utterly full of shit.
Try getting to know an actual artist or two before you start spouting off 19th-century faux-romantic stereotypes about us.
My husband and I are both artists. His work seems to garner more praise, but we’ve run about equal in sales.
I do think that as a woman, I’ve been conditioned to see him getting more attention when were both showing as something to accept– to not let ego turn what should be cooperation into competition. If someone comments on his work, I will tell them some of the story behind it, etc, instead of steering them to my work… it’s good business, helping to market him. But my artistic side does end up feeling slighted at the end of the day if everyone goes on about him and nothing about me.
And I loathe people treating art as a sort of personality cult. Because people do that, the assholes do get the attention (and sales). Why not go to galleries and pick out what you like based on the work, not the creator.
Why do I get the idea that Mold and Squashed only recently saw Spinal Tap for the first time and thought it was a real documentary?
Amanda Marcotte May 3, 2008 at 8:52 am
I’m always fascinated by how people will seek reasons to dismiss Courtney Love, but won’t see that those reasons apply equally to Kurt Cobain.
“Leached” off (i.e. inspired by and worked with others)? Cobain would have been nothing if he hadn’t been influenced by all sorts of bands in the area, especially the Melvins.
He himself admitted that much in interviews. Vaselines is another well known example, that everybody thought is odd. (Obviously it’s his first sound he learned from) But to compare The melvins to Nirvana is like comparing a potato to a Potato Casserole. The song structure, the bassline, riff, the whole things is different. Just about the only similarity is key preference and particular “fuzzy” sound in early nirvana’s work (obviously he learned the equipment set from the melvins) On top of that comparing sound evolution from albums to albums, live recordings of same songs in the span of his career, the whole thing makes sense. There is one underlying effort, getting away from metal. That Nirvana sound.
nirvanaclub.com/info/articles/index.html
Holes on the otherhand, just doesn’t make sense. Take “Live through this” vs. “Celebrity Skin”, those are the soul of two different persons. One is grunge like, heavy with songwriter, the other is Liz Phair-esque song writing with all sort of layers. (One with typical nirvana, large dynamic change, dissonance, choir of drone in the background, hot-warm extreme dynamic/key change, The next is elevator happy pop with basic rock form) huh…? They should at least hire better producers and songwriters and make it matched.
eg. “asking for it” — “Heaven Tonight”
In fact, Nevermind was a huge pop hit mainly because they had Butch Vig on production, and he can turn muddy, grunge sounds into pure pop beauty. Vig also worked production on various Smashing Pumpkins albums, and Love had an affair with Billy Corgan—in other words, if you’re going to fault Love for working her networks to improve her career, you have to fault Cobain for working the exact same networks.
Let’s just say, Cobain booleg and live recording is coherent through out times. Engineering or no engineering. they are all online. Holes? Completely erratic. And she can’t do pedal and complex layer (it’s that lush yet dreadfull sound of nirvana). It’s a question of execution. I seriously doubt she can get big label contract everything else beside the music.
Drug addict/hysterical personality? Cobain was such a self-involved addict and hysterical personality he killed himself after escaping from rehab. Love has done some terrible stuff, but nothing that terrible. Bad mom? Well, she didn’t kill herself, that’s for sure, so she’s got a leg up on Cobain in the parenting department.
In fact one item that drives him to suicide is the fact he sees himself in his daugther. (Sure that makes him bad parent) But you can’t say he is a bad guitarist or that Courtney Love is an accomplished musician and deserve more musical recognition. That’s bullshit.
geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Venue/6582/Nirvana/suicidenote.html
Comparing Live Through This and Nevermind, or even In Utero, strikes me as a bad idea. The albums sound very different to me, and could only really sound very much the same to someone who hasn’t listened to any other punk from the late 80s/early-to-mid-90s. Sure, they sound alike if you only listen to Top 40 stuff, but Nirvana’s stuff veered from Pixies-esque to this strange sort of melancholy and Hole was like a cross between riot grrl and the Smashing Pumpkins.
Huh…? That doesn’t make any sense (Count the beat, riff change, key change, see the overall song structure, compare the chorus) A Bach is still a Bach whether one plays it with bag pipes, trombone or an orchestra plus minor arrangement. What Hole is doing in their first album is nirvana songs.
On top of that, you can’t say “somebody is overshadowing another person, which imply comparison, then refuse admit there is such thing as comparing works. That’s schizoid.)
squashed, I’m really going to have to ask you to cut your comments to a half or third of what they are, because people are asking me to ban you. You’re not a bad person, and I don’t want to do that, but it’s getting obnoxious.
yeah yeah. I’ll do half the highest poster in a thread, and only after a post is halfway down the page. (So I got my own special rules. I can’t resist but thinking all the implications for admitting this … lol)
(but anyway I don’t think you can seriously argue “Hole” is worth listening as music work without people laughing. Somebody else is going to argue back. Compared to her contemporary, all you can say about CL, through her accomplished some work with limitation. It is the story of her effort that is worth noting, not the actual work itself. I know you have to sell the idea that women can do everything or else it’s gotta be somebody’s fault. But there are external rules you have to square too. Otherwise the argument will sound ridic. )
I have to say, I do think it’s valid to say, “That person may be a great artist, but I’m too distracted by his/her personal life to be able to focus on that.” I can understand why some people can’t watch Polanski’s movies, even the great ones like Chinatown.
However, I don’t think it’s fair to base one’s judgement of the art itself on what you think of the person. Polanski’s movies are not automatically bad because he’s a rapist. They may be something you choose not to watch because of his personal life, but they don’t magically become bad movies because he’s a convicted criminal.
(He fled the country after his conviction but before his sentencing, which is one of the reasons the LA District Attorney is never going to let him cut a deal to return to the US with no jail time.)
walkingg May 3, 2008 at 11:26 am
Comparing ut to hole is like apples and oranges but hey squashed thanks for the male IMS approved list of female musicians. How silly of me not to realize that women need to keep that anger restrained and cool. Love just sounds so bitter and humiliated. Of course it is possible that that is why some people like her music, it’s cathartic in a way that maybe you just don’t get.
yeah. but I bet I can post a series of tracks containing unlabeled files by female artist that expressed “bitter” and “humiliation” and you don’t know what to feel. (probably you can’t even tell if the work is done by male or female.)
Courtney Love, I think was talented, unfortunately it was thrown away more or less. Although I’m not even sure if that’s true, as much as it was taken away.
My view of that musical period, is basically the whole thing is Cobain vs. Corgan. It’s not the same style at all. It’s a what was (at the time) neo-punk vs. pop-rock flavored by the over-the-top sensibilities of hard rock. Minimalist vs. Maximalist. Come As You Are vs. Disarm (or if you take a wider view, Tonight, Tonight). A lot of bands were in that area, but those were, and probably still are the poles.
As mentioned, the guy who straddled the divide is Butch Vig. By and large, he probably made a lot of it happen.
And IMO, Hole just couldn’t match up to Vig, in the guise of Garbage.
In the long run, commercially, Cobain won. Corgan’s vision just isn’t that radio friendly (although I MUCH MUCH MUCH prefer it) I suspect that those growing up this decade will have similar debates between Jack White vs. Matthew Bellamy
Well that sums up the belief in the aristocracy of artists perfectly. And a tangential issue of this thread is that it’s almost always MALE artists that are revered in spite of being pedophiles, nasty, violent etc. etc.
While women get to serve them pancakes and suck up their abuse.
With a nice big smile.
Worship of the bad boy artist is one of the PUREST manifestations of male privilege EVER.
What? older women don’t date younger men or that men don’t serve in pancake join? Or that women just as man don’t have temper tantrum? Where the term ‘Diva’ comes from then?
I’m no Courtney Love fan by any stretch of the imagination (especially after she punched out Kathleen Hanna at Lollapalooza in the 90s and bragged about it afterwards), but I can’t help noticing in this whole discussion that there is a clear difference between the sexes regarding what’s accepted in the way of so-called “bad behavior”. I think about some of my own favorite problematic artists, like Mark E. Smith or Anton Newcombe, and wonder if their female equivalents would have been able to get their foot in the door?
I admit that when I read the description of the film in the link, my first thought was “Wait a minute people; let’s see this film first, because according to this description it could be OK.” Then I read the interview. Grow up.
My GF is not yet a Great Artist, but is doing a lot better in our shared field than I am. I go to a lot of parties where people want to talk to her and not necessarily me. (A lot of them do talk to me as well, and I appreciate that.) And I live with it. Because I’m an adult. Sometimes I get upset about the situation, but when I do I get upset about the specific circumstances in my life that prevent me from applying myself like she has, or the usual railings against the people who don’t understand my genius. But I would never feel the persecution that this guy does, or try to make some statement about - I don’t know, anything.
You know why? Because I’m HAPPY that my GF is doing well. And I’m glad people are realizing how great she is. Because she is great. I’m not getting the sense that Paul H-O thinks any of those things about Cindy Sherman.
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