| *installment three: meeting meidner |
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| Art school. What am I doing in this place? Collecting a stipend. The model is Joyce--again. I hate this woman. I would like to stab her with my palette knife. How many times do I have to draw those lifeless tits and those androgynous hips and that lumpy ass and--above all--the vacant look on that dizzy puss. But it isnt the body. Its the attitude. She stands there like she is waiting for a bus. She is dead meat. There is no energy or enthusiasm. She has the enthusiasm of a snail. Only the mouth works. She enters the room with the mouth flapping and the flapping continues for 3 hours. It is like wash drying in the wind. What does she talk about for 3 hours? About nothing. It is the pointless chatter of a mindless human being. It is maddening. Then we break. Now something happens. She comes to life. She is in a coma during the pose but during the breaks she comes to life. She skips and prances around like a goat. She does this naked. She walks around fondling her pussy while pestering the students for drawings. She has 2000 drawings of herself. The quality of the work is unimportant. It need only be a drawing of Joyce. But from me she gets nothing. Always I say no. She stands there massaging me with her crotch and I am obliged to look into this vacant puss and patiently endure this intolerable whining. I think she wants to bang me. But I have no eyes. It is embarrassing. I have complained to Prof Koch but it is no dice. Koch likes her. People are strange. Art school We have a new student--Meidner. This is a strange creature. He is small with a large head. He has glasses and ears like door handles. He has some grooming problems. He looks like he spent the nite in the gutter. He looks like a rat. He is shy. Getting him to speak is painful. But he has some redeeming qualitites. He can draw. He draws like a saint. This man is an artist. He draws like a saint and paints like a child. There is no hamstringing of thought. It is pure aggression. He paints with this hit or miss quality. But the anatomy is there. There is a juicy frontal bone rising up from the supercilliary arch and an axiomasseter muscle twitching behind that cheek and a perfect pocket carved into the philtrum. The philtrum is the scooped out part of the upper lip below the nose. I can never get this detail right. But Meidner slaps down a single brushstroke and nails this thing perfectly. He is a Van Gogh type. He even looks like Van Gogh. I am a little jealous. But this is good. It will be competition for me.Art is like sports. You must test yourself. We go for coffee. We discuss the current situation. This doesnt take long. Meidner is like myself--he agrees that artists should stick to painting. He was in the war--another ambulance driver. He met Beckmann in the hospital where they had both been sent to recover from nervous hysteria. He says Beckmanns work at this time had a long way to go. He was doing thrift store paintings. The war had a tremendous effect on his style. He entered the war a mediocrity and emerged a genuis. We discuss Cezanne. He is a great admirer of Cezanne--esp the early portraits. We talk about Corinth. For him Corinth is the master. We discuss dealers. He has a dealer who has sold one painting in 3 years for $35. He says: dealers are the scum of the earth. He also writes poetry. A painter and a poet. This is a man ill-equipped to survive in the modern world. We discuss women. He likes women. But women dont like him. I say no. Women like men who are confident. Confidence is interpreted in specific ways. What are these ways? A well-groomed appearence. A neat apartment. A steady job. This is a sad case. He is in desperate need of some pussy. I invite him to visit with me the establishment of Frau Sauckel. I offer to spring for this diversion. The idea appalls him. He visited a prostitute once. He couldnt get it up. Why not? Because he compounds sex with love. He cant dissociate the one from the other. He must feel a deep emotional connection with the woman. Sex is a holy thing. Etc, etc. Here we disagree. With me it is fucking. *for previous installments and an intro to the book go to |
| ludwig meidner self portrait |