You Gotta Get A Gimmick If You Wanna Get Ahead
In the movie 'Gypsy'—nominally a 1962 biopic based on a 1959 Broadway musical based on the life of Rose Louise Hovick aka 'Gypsy Rose Lee'—the incomparable Faith Dane, playing the part of Miss Mazeppa, sings 'You Gotta Get A Gimmick If You Wanna Get Ahead'. Faith Dane legally changed her name to single word 'Faith', but that gimmick has now been so overused—Sting, Cher, Madonna, Bono et al—that it became a gag for the Elaine Benes character played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the Seinfeld Show, who gave her name as just one word to a pen salesman. Faith was multi-talented; a portrait painter; swimming champion; classical pianist; player of the bugle, trumpet, flute, and drums. Her running carrer in political elections is the stuff of legend. A person seeking to be successful can spread themselves too thinly.
Faith claimed to have created much of the direction and stage business for her 'Miss Mazeppa' character in the original Broadway production of 'Gypsy' in 1959. She subsequently sued producer David Merrick to receive credit and financial compensation for doing so. This led Broadway producers to insert a clause in contracts for actors indicating that any stage business created by the actor in the course of production became the sole property of the production. This is know as the 'Faith Dane Clause' and to this day is generally included in all contracts for actors in Broadway shows. At least, like Sanity, she will be remembered down the years. Just a minute, there ain't no Sanity Clause!
Fiorello: Hey, wait, wait. What does this say here, this thing here?
Driftwood: Oh, that? Oh, that's the usual clause that's in every contract. That just says, uh, it says, uh, if any of the parties participating in this contract are shown not to be in their right mind, the entire agreement is automatically nullified.
Fiorello: Well, I don't know…
Driftwood: It's all right. That's… that's in every contract. That's… that's what they call a sanity clause.
Fiorello: Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Clause!
~ 'A Night at the Opera' 1935 Marx Brothers
If snaps of sunsets are not art, therefore of no monetary value, how does one take photographs that are generally acknowledged as art and therefore worth money? It's a question that has been vexing me lately, and one for which I would welcome a practical solution. I think the answer may be to develop a gimmick.
The couple Gilbert & George (G&G) is an artist—they met when they attended art school together and became as one, so that was something of a self fulfilling prophecy—which has a whole range of gimmicks. Some of the gimmicks are unfit for discussion in a family oriented weblog such as you are now reading, but 'Dusty Corners' (1967) and 'Bare Boards' (1968) don't seem to contain any blood, shit, piss, semen, or spit as far as I could ascertain. The G&G mantra is "Art for Everyone", but the photographs in question look more like they could have been taken by anyone and probably were: if the artist is in the photographs, did it take them?
Another good tip for being taken seriously as an artist is to have a manifesto. G&G published its manifesto in 1986. I found the 'Rules for Sculptors' far more pertinent. Let us be clear: the purpose here is to make lots of money. Everything else is just window dressing. So the first rule just is not going to happen; the third rule is probably a lost cause after years of shooting off my mouth and making enemies; the fourth rule is just a reinterpretation of the First Law of Thermodynamics
THE LAWS OF SCULPTORS
Gilbert & George1. Always be smartly dressed, well groomed relaxed friendly polite and in complete control.
2. Make the world to believe in you and to pay heavily for this privilege.
3. Never worry assess discuss or criticise but remain quiet respectful and calm.
4. The lord chisels still, so don’t leave your bench for long.
Ah, but the glorious second rule. That's the only one needed and the only one that really matters. Make that happen and then everything else will fall into place with click of a switch just like mama told us it would on Days Like This, as retold by Van Morrison.
On the MutualArt.com website you may view examples from the G&G 'Dusty Corners' series Nos. [3] [6] [7] and the 'Dead Boards' series Nos. [11] [13] and if they fail to get your heart beating then view the ChristiesInternational.com page that records the $384,000 sale of 'Dusty Corners, No.7' on 17 May 2007. Are these pictures in a similar vein the Seinfeld Show episodes beginning with No.43, 'The Pitch', about a show that was about nothing?
Yesterday, I posted a picture of an empty swimming pool. Unlike the earlier sunset snap giveaway, if you steal this one you will be hearing from my legal advisors. I am considering registering a single glyph as my legal name (I think © has a certain je ne sais quoi and by the way, it is written as Kopee Wright in long form) and from here on in, I intend to take pictures that are about nothing. By so doing, I expect to be rewarded with huge amounts of money.
Laura Cumming in the Observer asks, "Better Than a Poke in the Eye?" (neglecting to include "with a Pointy Stick", which is the best part of the phrase in my opinion) and discusses G&G having the "biggest-ever show at Tate Modern". Clearly, this couple is successful in the art world, or at least it was in 2007. For hoi polloi, an online purview of the exhibition is available: there is a room guide and Room No.4 is the one containing 'Dusty Corners' and 'Bare Boards'. Charlotte Higgins, coming streetwise from the left wing Guardian, alludes alliteratively to, "Tasting triumph: Gilbert and George relish their retrospective at the Tate".
If all this is a little effete for your tastes, repair to the TerribleRealEstateAgentPhotos.com blog. There you may sample pictures that are similar to the sort I intend to take in my quest for wealth beyond the dreams of a Croesus, generated by art pictures about nothing. The real estate agents (realtors in America) who took the pictures are patently not artists. There is no gimmick, and none of that other requirement, presentation. To succeed the pictures should be visually recognizable as art (monochrome is always a good start) and produced by some process that sounds as though it is beyond the means of an average photo snapper; G&G seem to have a fondness for the "gelatin silver print" process as we call it in the world of high art: you would call it "photographic paper".
Be assured that if I succeed in my new venture, it will not go to my head or change me in any way: I intend to remain the same mean, despicable, curmudgeonly misanthropist that you have grown to know and love… or at least to fearfully respect for my capacity to embarrass you in social situations.
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