To Mr. Picasso:
Thank you for your interest in our Artist Residency Program. Please answer these few questions about your proposed project, and our team will review your application for workshop space in our facilities.
Please describe your proposed project.
Um. It’s a portrait of a woman in a white dress. But her face and body will be disproportionate and angular. Her nose will appear to be coming out of her right eye, and her head will appear to have been bashed in with a sledgehammer.
What would you hope to accomplish during your residency here?
I plan to paint it…?
If your project were an animal, which would animal would it be?
What the fuck?
Please write a three-word sentence to describe your intention with this project.
Make people look.
That’s not a complete sentence.
Sure it is.
Is it an imperative sentence, with “you” as the implied subject, or…?
Uh…
Otherwise I don’t get it.
I have a feeling you don’t get a lot of things.
And finally, why this project now?
Because there are too many portraits of normal looking people. I want to do something different? I’m an artist with an idea and you’re an arts space. Why don’t you be the judge of why this now? Is it really my place to decide the importance and relevance of my own work? You know what…this whole thing is stupid. I’ll just work on it in my own studio.
Thank you. Your answers will be taken into serious consideration.
Fuck you.
I saw a screening of Les Miserable at the end of November, and I was swept away by the film. It was the first time I saw a Movie-Musical and thought: this works. There’s still new ground to be broken, I’m sure, but I think Tom Hooper has truly found a right combination of musical theatre style and cinematic story-telling.
