Something has been bugging me for a long time. A very long time. It has to do with Art, and about how artists talk about their influences. In fact, I can't remember when it first occurred to me, and when, or how it got stuck in my craw. It's one of those things that I can hear the authorities belittling me about; (he said paranoically..)
Without further ado:
Artists, I'll stick with painters for the moment, have a tendency to leave out certain people when they are giving credit for their influences. They will say something like, "Well, Gorky was a big influence, and of course, Cezanne, and Piero Dela Francesca, and Bill, you know, De Kooning?" But they will leave out another guy, who's influence is glaring if you just look at their work. If you challenge them, they will deny deny, and swear on a stack of Bibles if you confront them, in fact they will get very hostile, and they will make a point of going on an immediate quest to assassinate your character, sending out their acolytes to do the dirty work.
Of course writers do it too. It's a nasty habit. I suppose lots of people do it, even trades-people....but it strikes me as most offensive, most ugly, among the painters, perhaps because I've had several closeup views of this type of performance.
Next in order of importance for me in this regard are analyst-writers who write about psychoanalysis and other types of psychology who do the same type of dishonest omitting. As I'm reading one of their books I will flip often to the index to check and see who they allowed in and who they left out. Of course, I could be wrong about certain individuals, but could I be wrong every time? Well, yes. Ask one of the offenders.
Do poets do it? Fiction writers? Sculptors? (You betcha!) (I don't care about actors, there are too many of them today what with all the wave lengths available, and they've, with me at least, reached the saturation point.)
I'd be interested in knowing if anyone out there shares my irkedness and has any examples to share. Thanking you in advance, me.
Postscript; I've just finished reading D.W. Winnicott's book Psycho-analytic Explorations, and the last paragraph of the book illustrates to a degree both why D.W.W. has been thought of by some as one of the great thinkers of the 20th Century, and also what this lowly writer thinks is lacking in so many other artists and writers; this comes from an address he gave on the subject of his theory and it's relationship to other formulations of early development:
"I can't cover all that I want to. I will just say that I don't know whether you'd like to discuss any of this or would like to help me in a letter to try and make amends and join up with the various people all over the world who are doing work which either I've stolen or else I'm just ignoring. I don't promise to follow it all up because I know I'm just going to go on having an idea which belongs to where I am at the moment, and I can't help it."
Notes:
12/17/16
The Rights of Infants, Early Psychological needs and their satisfaction; by Margaret Ribble, M.D.
An M.D. and a Psychoanalyst based in Manhattan, my mother was going to her as an analysis patient at the time I was born, circa Dec. 1942.
Having just started to re-read this book starting with the last few chapters, I see similarities to the later work of Aulangier, Lacan, and Winnicott. Were any of these thinkers aware of Dr. Ribble? Not totally unlikely, and for me, tantalizing.
This could be under the heading, for further attention, of things the unconscious does in terms of editing, ie, deleting, contracting, expanding, and all that, which could be expanded to include purposeful ignoring......Here's a few lines from the index of my friend the late Elizabeth Fisher's great book, Woman's Creation... (She was a member and worked with the Italian Communist Party for some years.) ...in order.... Clitoris; Cockroach; Coitus; Colson; Comanche; Conception; Concubinage....and etc. No Communism..... Also, under the A's, no Adorno, about whom she spoke to me often.... This is just to say that when we leave things out it can be perfectly reasonable and innocent. No one really knows.....my father always mentioned Cezanne, as an influence.. to the point where I was sure he felt he was on safe ground there.
