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Art and celebrity

Excerpt from The Painter: A Novel of Pursuit

Standing alone, I’m quickly accosted by a self-conscious young woman with a penetrating gaze. She tells me of her plan to launch a cooperative gallery, all the time knitting with her fingers elaborate invisible arabesques. I can’t understand a word she’s saying, except that her scheme’s guaranteed to succeed as a real estate investment, even if the gallery fails to retail any art. She gives me a gigantic smile, and asks me what I think. When I tell her, the smile is instantly extinguished. She abruptly finishes her drink and wanders off to look for a more submissive victim.
    From The Painter: A Novel of Pursuit, page 63
The foretaste of painting exhilarates me. I grin when I think that three days ago I was shivering at the prospect of listening to the opinion of William Hinton. Now, down by the river at dawn, everything settles into a better perspective. Critical opinion isn’t the thing. Celebrity isn’t the thing. The thing is having my say in the way I want to say it. If someone listens, so much the better. But if I have my say, the rest doesn’t matter.
    From The Painter: A Novel of Pursuit, page 44

Other quotations on money and celebrity

Even the most radical practitioners expect to exhibit in old style museums and galleries because of the status it confers.
    Stephen Farthing: An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Art
When once a man has made celebrity necessary to his happiness, he has put it in the power of the weakest and most timorous malignity, if not to take away his satisfaction, at least to withhold it. His enemies may indulge their pride by airy negligence and gratify their malice by quiet neutrality. ~ share this Celebrity saying
    Dr. Samuel Johnson

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The Painter by Stephen Denning

The Painter

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Sonnets 2000

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