A little rant

[lizwilliams]

This from karentraviss: The more creative a person is, the more sexual partners they are likely to have, UK investigators have found. Artists and poets had an average of four to 10 sexual partners, compared to three for non-creative types, Newcastle and Open University teams discovered.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4479628.stm

One has to ask oneself: is this because artistic types are inherently more attractive, or just more badly behaved? It's an issue which has been annoying me somewhat over the weekend in the wake of George Best's demise - a lot of the coverage has been along the lines of 'yes, he was a drunk and a wife beater. But what a character, eh? And a genius footballer!' Tyson gets the same kind of coverage. Since when was athleticism an excuse?

If you're single, or in an agreed polyamorous relationship, then fair enough: it's no one's business but your own. But I'm sure we have all run into a few folk who think that writing second-rate novels or painting indifferent oils somehow gives them a free access-all-areas pass into other people's relationships, or allows them to run around behind their partners' backs ('And that's okay because we're so WONDERFULLY CREATIVE and free in our expression!'). I blame Augustus John, Eric Gill and all those late 19th century artistes who thought that their genius entitled them to shag anything that moved: other people's maids, their own kids...And carries right through to the Bloomsbury Group, a bunch of mediocre poseurs if ever there was one (with the exception of V Woolf), the Factory, and pretty much any rock star you care to mention. It probably reaches its culmination with Anais Nin, who really wasn't all that good at anything except having lots of sexual partners.

I don't think genius entitles you to anything except acknowledgment that you're good at something. I don't really care all that much about other people's lives - but I'd like it if, just to keep a balance, some creative person with a long, dull, everyday marriage was celebrated, precisely for that.

Comments

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

The trend goes back even further - certainly to Byron, Shelly et al. in the early 19th century.

And yes, I agree with you on George Best. I really fail to comprehend his deification over the last few weeks. He was a drunk, who wasted a perfectly good liver transplant that could have gone to someone else, and still be keeping them alive, as well as all the rest.

[camies.livejournal.com]

'Sfunny, I was just wondering about this recently - the current WiP has to do with it and the apparent tendency for biopics of arty people (esp. women) to go along the lines of 'Never mind the art, who did they shag?'* Anais Nin as you say did seem to think that promiscuity was some kind of artistic endeavour in its own right. (Mind you when i was doing the London performance poetry circuit in the late 1980s it seemed a lot of people treated it as first and foremost a dating agency)

*though this may be the way the films in question - bios of Iris Murdoch, Frida Kahlo, Jacqueline du Pre' - were reviewed / reported on, rather than reflecting the content of the movies.

[sdn.livejournal.com]

::throws fist in air::

thank you.

"open" university indeed. ::grins::

[greeneyedkzin.livejournal.com]

Before it even gets to whom people sleep with, it's a matter of how they behave. Being creative or, for that matter, simply being intellectual is a free pass to the arrogance, impatience, and intolerance with others (especially people in fields not deemed "creative" or people not deemed "as smart") that I've seen some writers, artists, and fans display.

"Smart" isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card for acting like a jerk. Quite to the contrary, the way I was brought up, perhaps too severely so. And it certainly isn't a passport to the resentment of other people's success that I often witness. I wish people would just grow UP.

[caskared.livejournal.com]

I agree, I know too many people who do the free expression sleep around thing because they see that as being part of creative. When they're single it's fine, but some have relationships and it just ends horribly...somehow the word 'expression' covers up the words 'cheating' and 'lying'...and thus conculdes my sanctimonious comment for today.

I think the article may just have been an excuse to show a picture of David Tennent as Casanova!

Bloomsburies...

[rozk.livejournal.com]

I think that the point about the Bloomsbury crowd is that for the most part they were actually trying to find a way to behave decently without God or conventional morals, rather than that they were careless libertines.

I don't entirely agree with your assessment of them, either. Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant were very minor painters, it is true, but they and Fry helped create an understanding of far better ones. Strachey was a definite minor talent who singlehandedly rewrote, for good or ill, the concept of what it is to be a biographer. Keynes - I would argue that he was a significant prose stylist apart from being one of the most important economists ever. Lopokova was a great dancer - though I don't know whether she counts as part of the group. The Nicholsons were a waste of space in many ways, I'll give you that, but again, they are pretty marginal to the Group as such. And if you are allowed them, you have to include Russell, Eliot and Hope Mirlees...

Eliot was not much for screwing around, as far as we know, but was a shit. Mozart was a horndog, but seems to have done little harm to himself or the women he slept with, because he stuck to women who, like his wife and her sisters, were players in their own right.

I'd argue that the significant question is always the consequences of what people did and do - great artists seem as split as the rest of the human race on that one.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I'm thinking, inherent flaws in the methodology are at fault here. Sure, their study focuses on poets and artists, but is the "creative job" really what these people have in common at the base of it, and not family of origin structures, or being born during the same batch of sunspots? Ok, so the second one is unlikely, but... studies like this always seem shallow in their scope. "Oh, we've noticed a correllation! Let's post our findings, pasted over with some science jabber!"

The most promiscuous people I've known have been biochemists and engineers. Do I think that means anything about biochemists and engineers? No, I do not.

George Best

[cleopand.livejournal.com]

a lot of the coverage has been along the lines of 'yes, he was a drunk and a wife beater. But what a character, eh?

THANK YOU! I'm more of a rugby fan myself, but I can appreciate Best's artistry as a uniquely talented footballer. But I can't see why his appalling behaviour over the years has suddenly become invisible. Ye gods! I've just heard on the radio that the preparations for his funeral in Belfast are on a par with those of St Diana of Hearts (and I thought she was a jumped up baggage too and I didn't vote for her).
Ho hum... off to the Bloody Tower for me after that statement, no doubt...
CP

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

I think there's a little bit of wish fulfillment going on as well. Vicarious thrill with the immorality of all those geniuses. If it was all dull and everyday, well, that's what readers and investigators and interviewers already have. I think they'd be disappointed to find it's not all musical beds and skittles.

It's the same as readers thinking that if you've published one book, you're a millionaire. Part ignorance, part hope.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Hear hear!

[vogelbeere.livejournal.com]

Would you like to sin
With Elinor Glyn
On a tiger skin
Or would you prefer
To err
With her
On some other fur?