{"id":4301,"date":"2017-09-13T03:20:56","date_gmt":"2017-09-13T03:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/?p=4301"},"modified":"2017-09-13T03:34:07","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T03:34:07","slug":"pompousness-of-younger-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/?p=4301","title":{"rendered":"Pompousness of Younger Self"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Court Painter reflects on ‘pompousness’ of younger self with new home made video<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n

‘Right up to the time I stopped drinking, everything I said was absolute blather,’ says painting virtuoso<\/h3>\n

\"\"still photo from video<\/em><\/p>\n

Painting celebrity Court Painter laughs during a Monday press conference for his home made documentary video Court Painter & Being The Cat’s Ass, which had its world premiere at his Inglewood studio Sunday night. Court Painter has lived a life of extreme highs and devastating lows, so it’s understandable that he might find the new documentary Court Painter & Being The Cat’s Ass\u00a0<\/em>difficult to watch.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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When asked Monday about whether any of the video footage of his younger self embarrassed him,\u00a0the portrait painting legend was blunt.<\/p>\n

\"\"still photo from video<\/em><\/p>\n

“The whole thing. Are you kidding? The whole thing\u2026right up to the time I stopped drinking, everything I said [was] absolute blather,” he told interviewer Mr. Glick at his studio press conference Monday morning, after the doc’s Sunday evening world premiere in Inglewood.<\/p>\n

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\"\"archival photo of CP & admirer<\/em><\/p>\n

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“There’s a certain amount of pompousness that I see when I interviewed myself,” noted the virtuoso of masterworks depicting political and celebrity subjects too numerous to mention although he took a good 10 minutes listing off the most famous.He also treated the gathered throng to an impromptu piano & song treat with Press Attache A Hardon MacKay followed by a recitation of the video voice over script in his tremulous voice.<\/p>\n

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\"\"still photo from video<\/em><\/p>\n

Video voice over script: <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>I consider myself fastidious, an unbelievable, a beaux, a lion or a dandy even: whichever label I claim for myself, one and all stem from the same origin, all share the same characteristic of opposition and revolt; all are representatives of what is best in artistic pride, of that need, which is too rare in the hipster generation, to combat and destroy triviality. That is the source, in this Court Painter, of that haughty, patrician attitude, aggressive even in its coldness. Court Painter has appeared in this period of transition when Big Data has not yet become all-powerful, and when my aristocratic bearing is only partially weakened and discredited. In the confusion of such times, a certain man, a disenchanted and leisured \u2018outsider\u2019, but yet richly endowed with native energy, may conceive the idea of establishing a new kind of aristocracy in the studio, all the more difficult to break down because established on the most precious, the most indestructible faculties, on the divine gifts that neither work nor money can give. My Court Painter style is the last flicker of heroism in this decadent ages of The Trumpster; and the sort of dandy discovered by the traveler in Inglewood in no sense invalidates this idea; for there is no valid reason why we should not believe that the artists we call striving are not the remnants of great civilizations of the past. I am like a setting sun; like the declining star, to be magnificent, without heat and full of melancholy. But alas! the rising tide of\u00a0monetization\u00a0in the arts, which spreads everywhere and reduces everything to the same level, is daily carrying away this last champion of human pride, and submerging, in the waters of oblivion, the last traces of these remarkable myrmidons. I truly embrace Being the Cat’s Ass!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"\"archival photos of CP Being the Cat’s Ass<\/em><\/p>\n

“Maybe it’s true for all of us when we’re young: there’s a level of arrogance there that ‘I know it all.’ Only as I get older do I realize that I know nothing at all, whatsoever.” He then proceeded to hand out reproductions of his many many works on paper and more expensive canvases that deal extensively with the subject of Nothingness and its gateway into the Void.<\/p>\n

\"\"archival photo of CP staring into the Void<\/em><\/p>\n

Still, Court Painter gave himself as videographer\u00a0complete licence to fully explore his life story and approached himself with the idea of what would become his first documentary as a director.He gave a shout out to the underrated and staunchly obscure video maker Nelson Auteur (www.nelsonauteur.com) as his main influence and mentor.<\/p>\n

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Nelson Auteur (covered by copyright)<\/em><\/p>\n

“I was somewhat concerned that there may be an impression because of me being me that I would whitewash something and would take out the erotic parts,” said Court Painter in a hushed but audible tone.<\/p>\n

\"\"still photo from video<\/em><\/p>\n

“None of that happened because of the trust that I have in myself and the fact that I gave myself the responsibility and didn’t second guess myself as a desirable erotic body.”<\/p>\n

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\"\"still photos from video<\/em><\/p>\n

The revealing video portrait\u00a0\u2014\u00a0told through voiceover from Court Painter himself, as well as interview excerpts from his Press Attache A Hardon MacKay\u2014\u00a0doesn’t flinch about some of the painter’s darkest moments:\u00a0a traumatic relationship with his nemesis Calgary painter CC (name available upon request) , decades-long substance abuse battle, tumultuous love life and chronic poor sales.<\/p>\n

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archival photo of CP and (name provided upon request)<\/em><\/div>\n
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However, again and again, “My Art saved me,” \u00a0Court Painter says loudly in the video, which taps into a wealth of archival photos, videos, audio interviews, painting sessions and even his own childhood drawings and paintings to tell the story of how an Iowa son of corn farmers became a generation-defining portrait painter icon.<\/p>\n

\"\"archival photo of CP with admirer<\/em><\/p>\n

“This wasn’t a period of\u00a0time when people whipped out a phone and said ‘Let me have a picture taken with you,'”he noted, saying he felt lucky with many archival finds, from home video footage of Court Painter’s numerous studio raves and orgies that came from his artistic nemesis CC (name available upon request) who just happened to have kept all of them.<\/p>\n

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\"\"archival photos of studio raves \u00a0 \/ \u00a0\u00a0<\/em>additional orgy photos available by request only<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Also the gems of a rare audio interview of Court Painter talking of his time visiting the Gopher Museum and clutching a precious award were unearthed.<\/p>\n

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“Things like that,\u00a0those are real treasures,” Court Painter & Being a Cat’s Ass gushed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Court Painter reflects on ‘pompousness’ of younger self with new home made video ‘Right up to the time I stopped drinking, everything I said was absolute blather,’ says painting virtuoso still photo from video Painting celebrity Court Painter laughs during a Monday press conference for his home made documentary video Court Painter & Being The … Continue reading “Pompousness of Younger Self”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-images","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4301"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4336,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4301\/revisions\/4336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/allanhardingmackay.ca\/courtpainter\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}