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The Mailer Review/Volume 2, 2008/From Monroe to Picasso: Norman Mailer and the Life-Study: Difference between revisions
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Throughout the biography Mailer gives priority to such decisive vignettes and cumulatively provides a devastating critique of a culture in collapse. For behind the white picket-fence and “at the end of every sweet and quiet passage of love, amputation or absurdity is waiting”.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=33}} Again he shows here the influence of Picasso, master of semblances. In the brief essay “An Eye on Picasso,” published as early as 1959 in ''Advertisements for Myself'', there is already recognition of the moral necessity of the painter’s combative assaults on the form and appearance of the conventional world: | Throughout the biography Mailer gives priority to such decisive vignettes and cumulatively provides a devastating critique of a culture in collapse. For behind the white picket-fence and “at the end of every sweet and quiet passage of love, amputation or absurdity is waiting”.{{sfn|Mailer|1973|p=33}} Again he shows here the influence of Picasso, master of semblances. In the brief essay “An Eye on Picasso,” published as early as 1959 in ''Advertisements for Myself'', there is already recognition of the moral necessity of the painter’s combative assaults on the form and appearance of the conventional world: | ||
<blockquote>For the last fifty years ... Picasso has used his brush like a sword.... Up and down the world of appearances he has marched, sacking and pillaging and tearing and slashing, a modern-day Cortez conquering an empire of appearances. It is possible that there has never been a painter who will leave the intimate objects of the world so altered by the swath of his work ... He is the first painter to bridge the animate and the inanimate.{{sfn|Mailer|1959a|461}}</blockquote> | <blockquote>For the last fifty years ... Picasso has used his brush like a sword.... Up and down the world of appearances he has marched, sacking and pillaging and tearing and slashing, a modern-day Cortez conquering an empire of appearances. It is possible that there has never been a painter who will leave the intimate objects of the world so altered by the swath of his work ... He is the first painter to bridge the animate and the inanimate.{{sfn|Mailer|1959a|p=461}}</blockquote> | ||
The first painter perhaps, but soon followed by a writer, for certainly this is also Mailer’s bailiwick. We have only to think of “The White Negro” to realize his espousal of a similar approach. Of course that essay and a great deal of his thinking at that time is also rooted in an existential ethic of necessary confrontation with one’s own weakness, and with the individual’s challenge to the post war consensus in American culture. This had all but succeeded in placing its brand on a population who existed in a state of clammy cowardice and totalitarian control—“[a] stench of fear has come out of every pore of American life, and we suffer from a collective failure of nerve.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959b|p=338}} | The first painter perhaps, but soon followed by a writer, for certainly this is also Mailer’s bailiwick. We have only to think of “The White Negro” to realize his espousal of a similar approach. Of course that essay and a great deal of his thinking at that time is also rooted in an existential ethic of necessary confrontation with one’s own weakness, and with the individual’s challenge to the post war consensus in American culture. This had all but succeeded in placing its brand on a population who existed in a state of clammy cowardice and totalitarian control—“[a] stench of fear has come out of every pore of American life, and we suffer from a collective failure of nerve.”{{sfn|Mailer|1959b|p=338}} | ||
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* {{cite news |last=Bremner |first=Charles |date=17 May 2003 |title=French Saw Picasso as an Enemy of the State |newspaper=The Times |page=16 |ref=harv }} | * {{cite news |last=Bremner |first=Charles |date=17 May 2003 |title=French Saw Picasso as an Enemy of the State |newspaper=The Times |page=16 |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Flam |first=Jack |date=1986 |title=Matisse: The Man and His Art 1869-1918 |location=Ithaca |publisher=Cornell UP |ref=harv }} | * {{cite book |last=Flam |first=Jack |date=1986 |title=Matisse: The Man and His Art 1869-1918 |location=Ithaca |publisher=Cornell UP |ref=harv }} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date= | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |date=1959a |title=Advertisements for Myself |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |ref=harv}} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=Cannibals and Christians |location=New York |publisher=Dial |ref=harv}} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1965 |title=Cannibals and Christians |location=New York |publisher=Dial |ref=harv}} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1973 |title=Marilyn: A Biography |location=New York |publisher=Grosset & Dunlap |ref=harv}} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1973 |title=Marilyn: A Biography |location=New York |publisher=Grosset & Dunlap |ref=harv}} | ||
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* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1963 |title=The Presidential Papers |location=New York |publisher= Putnam |ref=harv}} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1963 |title=The Presidential Papers |location=New York |publisher= Putnam |ref=harv}} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2003 |title=The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |location=New York |publisher= Random House |ref=harv}} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2003 |title=The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing |editor-last=Lennon |editor-first=J. Michael |location=New York |publisher= Random House |ref=harv}} | ||
* {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date= | * {{cite journal |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=1959b |title=The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster |journal=Advertisements for Myself |location=New York |publisher=Putnam |pages=337-358 |ref=harv}} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2003 |title=Why Are We at War? |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv}} | * {{cite book |last=Mailer |first=Norman |authormask=1 |date=2003 |title=Why Are We at War? |location=New York |publisher=Random House |ref=harv}} | ||
* {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |date=1986 |title=Mailer: His Life and Times |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex |publisher=Penguin |ref=harv}} | * {{cite book |last=Manso |first=Peter |date=1986 |title=Mailer: His Life and Times |location=Harmondsworth, Middlesex |publisher=Penguin |ref=harv}} | ||