OFFICIALLY REGISTERED AS: GREGOIRE BOONZAIER ART INVESTMENTS CC
DIRECTOR MEMBERS: ANTON BOONZAIER / EMILE BOONZAIER / SYBRAND SMIT
Copyright © 2009 A.L. BOONZAIER. (ALL RIGHTS RESERVED)
Article 3, Pg 1
Popular belief is that artists are special people. They’re ascribed talent (connoting aura and creative mystique) rather than mere aptitude or skill. Some thrive in symbiosis with certain (often self-ordained) “gurus”, the interpreters, advisers and perpetuators of the right AH-RT, deemed “supernatural revelations”. An initiate middle class, aspiring, but insecure, eagerly buys into the notion of divine artistic disclosures, in reality custom-designated commodities, acquired at a price, enviably possessed and with time most profitably traded as relics. This elite accords itself both a developed IQ and EQ that entice esteem of what successful artists pursue above the indispensable expertise of the most accomplished surgeons, engineers, scientists and technicians.
Cynical? Perhaps. At least not disingenuous. Truth is, though, that artists probably expend less time creating than they do on branding, advertising, marketing and public relations (themselves and via their intermediaries). The blur between desirable art as having intrinsic mental and emotional value and as big business has become almost opaque. Gregoire’s correspondence, phone calls, procuring of materials, pricing, seeing prospective clients and dealers, giving input in publications like calendars, prints and books, signing and dating these, being interviewed, framing, preparing for exhibitions, etc., seemed never-ending. Practising art is as much a profession or job as it is an act of originating. In the process of what Gregoire called “this damn racket” the merits and demerits of “made” painters’ specific works, based on artistic criteria alone, become side-issues to the agendas of the “priestly mafia” that determines what of whom should be bought when, where and why. Several dealer friends express strategy as an “educational duty” embedded in enterprise because the public is ignorant and needs reassurance. (?) Few understood the “plot” behind it all better than Gregoire, or have been as outspoken.
Artists, too, are no less subjected to daily humdrum than the rest of us: ablutions, meals, cleaning, shopping, settling accounts, entertaining, leisure, etc. As people some are extroverts; others introverts. Their dress code can be ostentatious or staid; their demeanour bombastic or selfeffacing; their company boring or entertaining; and their behaviour a little eccentric or quite (disappointingly?) “normal”. The public nonetheless tends to obsess about artists’ day-to-day routines, personalities, spiritual inclinations and especially endurance of personal ordeals.
Umpteen tomes have been written about Van Gogh’s bipolarity; Gaugin’s escape from the mundane to his Tahitian Eden; and about Picasso’s contempt of women, “undeniably” reflected in distorted portrayals of them. Psycho-analytical and biographical commentary, however fascinating, invariably deviates attention away from the quality of whoever’s works, which do have an existence of their own and must ultimately survive as entities independent of their creators. Unless circumspect about what artists declare of themselves and their objectives, their proclaimed intentions and states of mind assume greater significance with us than how well in specific depictions they apply their materials (whatever) and integrate what will remain the basic pictorial elements, viz. composition, space, line, colour, contrast and texture. Furthermore, viewing different artists’ creations with opinions and data received from others induces a predetermined affect on those frequently regarded behind their backs as the moneyed dupes too uncertain about their own reactions. What then of the “educational duty”?
Cynical? Perhaps. At least not disingenuous. Truth is, though, that artists probably expend less time creating than they do on branding, advertising, marketing and public relations (themselves and via their intermediaries). The blur between desirable art as having intrinsic mental and emotional value and as big business has become almost opaque. Gregoire’s correspondence, phone calls, procuring of materials, pricing, seeing prospective clients and dealers, giving input in publications like calendars, prints and books, signing and dating these, being interviewed, framing, preparing for exhibitions, etc., seemed never-
Artists, too, are no less subjected to daily humdrum than the rest of us: ablutions, meals, cleaning, shopping, settling accounts, entertaining, leisure, etc. As people some are extroverts; others introverts. Their dress code can be ostentatious or staid; their demeanour bombastic or selfeffacing; their company boring or entertaining; and their behaviour a little eccentric or quite (disappointingly?) “normal”. The public nonetheless tends to obsess about artists’ day-
Umpteen tomes have been written about Van Gogh’s bipolarity; Gaugin’s escape from the mundane to his Tahitian Eden; and about Picasso’s contempt of women, “undeniably” reflected in distorted portrayals of them. Psycho-
