A Defense of John Maus and Bratty Artists
Yesterday, Pitchfork ran its “Guest List” feature with John Maus. Subsequently, I and a few other people took umbrage at Maus’s tone through the piece. Not so much an interview as a formulaic, often fun “tell me your favorites” piece, it rubbed Maus the wrong way after a bit […]
But I soon regretted my little gimmick. Partially because it was immature and catty, partially because it was unfair to Maus as a polemical artist (more on that in a minute), but mostly because 1) in the embedded quote above, he’s both correct and holds to his own personal aesthetic philosophy, 2) I’m more like him than I felt comfortable admitting, and 3) I failed to properly account for my own artist-as-public-figure biases.
Eric Harvey, writing exactly the sort of thing I wanted to write, but much better! (Because of the growth of his thinking on the subject, and because he could mention Badiou without spitting on the floor (twice), something I cannot do.)
