Comments on: Wishing Makes It So! (Wrapping Up on Hollywood)

By: atlanta spa

atlanta spa — Wed, 18 May 2011 06:33:22 +0000

I agree too. it is really a shame that real practicing artists often end up neglected. Thank you for this article I enjoyed reading this kind of blogs that is very good to know.

By: Carla

Carla — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 21:37:40 +0000

I enjoyed reading your article! I’ve only been to Cali once, and never the L.A. area. I have been in the “art world” mostly as an observer for a while, in some respects each art scene creates its own little “Hollywood” no matter where it springs up. I had not heard of Mr. Herms, so I used this opportunity to look him up. I liked what I saw of his work, but I was most impressed with his integrity as an artist. I agree with you, there is no reason for an artist of his stature to be struggling at his time of life, but he sounds like a guy who has cast off much of what the Western, Capitalist model uses as indicators of a successful life. Lot’s of people do that, but not so many right in the belly of the beast, so to speak. As for Mat Gleason. Yea, he’s a cultural gadfly, but he balances an equation. Some of the most cloying and insidious commentary about the darlings of investors needs a counterpoint. Well…in Mat Gleason, they’ve bloody well got one!

By: maxwelldog

maxwelldog — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:33:15 +0000

and, here it is, some eight years later and there is no sign of improvement from Mat Gleason, only now his aim takes a new direction…
Condemning anyone from da Vinci to Rubens, Renoir, Dali, Chagall, Johns…
Giotto is an unoriginal copycat!?

Alas, his spot on the Huffington Post allows him to laud his non-knowledge over an audience of men and women far his superior in knowledge and understanding, drooling on himself as he writes of artistic nature and crumbling walls, though, his new position also allows his to be the last word… removing comment after comment from learned art historians… although, to be sure, I am not in their class, either. An enthusiastic amateur, researched to the hilt because I AM an artist, and I love the comments from those regulars who orbit around new art at Huffington Post.
But, That’s another story.

Gleason’s fall will be a laughter event when it comes, and we all gleefully await its arrival.

By: admin

admin — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:33:58 +0000

Thanks for writing, Jenny. I agree it’s a shame that real practicing artists often end up neglected.
In case you’re interested, here’s a bit more of what I ended up writing on the artist George Herms. Interestingly, a year or so after my OC Weekly story came out, Herms had a couple of reputation-revival shows, which Mat Gleason wrote about on Artscenecal.

By: Jenny Johnson

Jenny Johnson — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 18:28:22 +0000

That’s sad that true artists (that aren’t also famous actors) are struggling even in Hollywood, a place that seems to love the unreal, as you pointed out. You would think that actual people who spend their lives in painting and sculpture and other artwork would be adored and admired and well paid in L.A. I guess that goes to show that not all is as shiny as it seems even in that glitzy realm.

I wonder who that publicist is who “now works for Viggo Mortensen’s nonprofit “charitable” organization that is charged with funding art… to filter money to his artist friends” is. I’m not a friend of his but I’d love to get such funding for art. LOL.