:12:00
To me the ideal
audience-to-artist relationship...
:12:04
is a one-to-zero relationship.
:12:07
- That's the moral objection.
- Run that by me again?
:12:10
First l'm not at all happy with words
like "public" and "artist"...
:12:13
or the hierarchical implications
of that kind of terminology.
:12:17
The artist should be
granted anonymity.
:12:20
He should be permitted to operate
in secret as it were...
:12:22
unconcerned with or better still
unaware of the marketplace's demands...
:12:26
which demands given enough indifference
on the part of enough artists...
:12:30
will simply disappear.
:12:32
Given that disappearance the artist
will then abandon his false sense...
:12:36
of public responsibility...
:12:38
and his audience or "public"
will relinquish its...
:12:42
- role of servile dependency.
- And never the twain shall meet.
:12:45
No they'll make contact
but on a much more meaningful level.
:12:48
Well Mr. Gould
l'm well aware that this sort of...
:12:52
idealistic role swapping has
a certain rhetorical flourish.
:12:55
The creative audience concept of which
you've spoken at length elsewhere...
:12:59
has a kind
of McLuhan-esque fascination.
:13:01
But you conveniently forget that
the artist however hermetic his life...
:13:06
is still in effect
an autocratic figure.
:13:08
He's still however benevolently
a social dictator...
:13:11
and his public however generously
enfranchised by electronic options...
:13:14
is still on the receiving end
of the experience.
:13:18
All your neomedieval anonymity quest
on behalf of the "artist-as-zero"...
:13:22
and all your vertical pan-culturalism on
behalf of his "public" won't change it.
:13:25
May l speak now?
:13:26
Of course. Sorry to get carried away.
But l do feel strongly about the--
:13:29
- About the artist as Superman?
- That's not quite fair Mr. Gould.
:13:33
Or about the interlocutor
as controller of conversation perhaps?
:13:37
There's no need to be rude.
:13:44
What about this?
:13:46
lf you imagine that the artist--