An encounter with Tintoretto’s White-Bearded Man, driven by novelist Thomas Bernhard

“State-commissioned art is what Reger calls the paintings hanging on these walls, including even the White-Bearded Man. The so-called old masters only ever served the state or the Church, which comes to the same thing, as Reger says time and again, they served an emperor or a Pope, a duke or an archbishop. Just as so-called free man is a utopia, so the so-called free artist has always been a utopia, Reger often says. Artists, the so-called great artists, I believe, are moreover, says Reger, the most unscrupulous of all people, they are a lot more unscrupulous even then politicians. Artists are the worst liars, even worse than politicians, which means that the art artists are even worse liars than the state artists, I can hear Reger say again.”

 

from “Old masters“, by Thomas Bernhard, 1985.

July 15, 2015