selected articles and essays by Frank Rodick
No Maggot Lonely: Thoughts from a Life in Art
“The artists whose work I’ve loved, they all had serious skin in the game. Tracy Emin comes to mind. Diane Arbus, especially those untitled 1970–71 photos. Michelangelo’s Slaves. Tarkovsky’s Andrei Roublev. Henry Darger. Emil Cioran (an essayist but really a poet). About six months ago I finished Ágota Kristóf’s trilogy, The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie: it took my breath away. Of course, they’re all different. But they have something in common: they worked as if their lives depended on it.”
Blood Money and Reveries
This essay is based on the image parade for the blind, from the series Frances.
“… in 1951 not only am I literally nobody and nothing, but — for what it’s worth—the odds against me ever existing are infinitely huge. Which is of no interest to practically anyone besides me, and even then just once in a blue moon when I find it a playful tonic against the delusion—private, grand, and, comic—that I’m inevitable.”
Stories of Love and Betrayal: On Making My Mother’s Portrait
“So much desire, and all of it out of fear more than anything, out of the fear that years pass and what seemed like everything comes to nothing. It’s fear and its fate, and I try to slow the march of both by giving them their due, by making offerings in their name, by shamelessly inviting them to humour me. And living with the knowledge that while my labour passes the time, while work provides moments here and there that feel like a distant cousin to satisfaction, the meaning of those efforts are, always and at their absolute best, nebulous and imagined, which is not to say worthless.”
Notes on Making My Father’s Portrait
“I see the human face of time, that what looks and feels like a long life is just one more cipher. I see the past and present, coexisting and coalescing, swimming through each other. I see that the child — standing stiffly next to a borrowed teddy bear — is also the dying old man who wants to see one more day. That we try not to think of these things because we’re afraid we can’t bear them, though we can, and much more.”
The Long Season of Untitled Selves
“I see the human face of time, that what looks and feels like a long life is just one more cipher. I see the past and present, coexisting and coalescing, swimming through each other. I see that the child — standing stiffly next to a borrowed teddy bear — is also the dying old man who wants to see one more day. That we try not to think of these things because we’re afraid we can’t bear them, though we can, and much more.”
A Letter to My Younger Self on Life, Art, and What Really Matters
“Creating art is one of the most self-indulgent pursuits there is, and saying otherwise is kidding yourself. Being an artist may exasperate you quite often (it will), but it’s a grand privilege to spend so much time carousing in the corridors of your imagination. (And complaining about its downside is mostly bad form, though I understand if you’ll need to get it out of your system from time to time.)”
What To Do When You’re an Artist and You Feel Like Sh*t
“I’ve seen lots of things hold back people who say they want to be artists. Mostly they’re waiting. For the right time and the right circumstances to get down to it. They’re waiting for — here insert suppression of gag reflex — inspiration. Or for the kids to be grown, or for when they have enough money to buy just the right tools or live in the right place. Or they’re waiting for that soul-destroying fucker of a sibling or parent—who, make no mistake, really is a soul-destroying fucker—to stop being such a drag and get lost, or better yet die, and leave them alone. And very often they’re waiting for that pep talk from someone who cares, the perfectly honeyed message that hits all the right notes, a song that kicks them into feeling better about, well, being who they are. Then—then, by God—they’ll get down to work and, yeah, set the world on fire.