found Adam Cullen to be unexceptional both as an artist and a person, He was reckless of others and of himself, He certainly wasnt mentally stable and there appears nothing about his character that is redeemable, at least not in the picture Jensen paints of him.
I finished the book with a disgust for Cullen, which I think was Jensen's intent, but was left wondering more about the author: why Jensen chose to remain with Cullen for such a lengthy period in such an environment.
Jensen is observant and unforgiving in his portrayal of Cullen but I feel theres another story in that relationship, On Art: "I love it because it is so useless, " I saw the film first which I obviously enjoyed enough to come back for more, so I can't help but compare certain aspects of the book.
I was extremely worried when reading the opening pages of Acute Misfortune, which consist of email transcripts of extreme ego stroking and at times flirtation i.
e. total wank. Fortunately this eases up quickly, but both writer and subject come across as totally narcissistic so be warned,
Not sure how effective dividing the book into sections was some are definitely stronger than others, and I feel disconnecting aspects of Adam's life in this way made it hard to look at things as a whole.
Both the film and the book fail to really get at the heart of Adam's long term relationship, which I'm curious about as it's described as being very formative and impactful on Adam's art, life, behaviours, but we don't really get much insight into it.
I believe that behind every creatively brilliant man there is a longsuffering, stifled woman, and I would be much more interested in hearing her story! Written with clarity and force.
Plus, the hardback version is a beautiful object, Great writing about a pretty fucked up person, basically, Reading this biography about a self destructive, self indulgent narcissist was like looking at a car crash brutal, bloody, tragic and enthralling all at once.
I couldn't put it down, At least I got to experience the horror at a safe distance, This is an unflinching account of the life of avant garde artist Adam Cullen, Cullen won Australia's major portrait prize, the Archibald, but most of his work was far more confronting and radical, He was an iconoclast with major dependencies on drugs and alcohol,
Erik Jensen spent months in close proximity to his subject, shacking up with him in his remote studio and talking about his deepest feelings.
The relationship between writer and subject became fraught, even abusive, in the process, and Jensen does not hesitate to put all that on record,
I'm ambivalent about this book, I think the reader's opinion is mostly going to come down to the degree of empathy that they feel for Cullen, and whether they can look past his personal failings in the appreciation of his art.
I couldn't. Can a failed project, a ghastly protagonist and a miserable life make for a great read
In the hands of Erik Jensen with, I suspect, careful editorial support, they certainly can.
There is so much to admire about this book: it's exquisitely written, cleverly structured, subtle but cleareyed in negotiating its way around its subject, Jensen can turn a great sentence, and deliver an understated kicker with aplomb qualities often used to quietly but decisively deflate Cullen's own claims and fabulations.
But is Cullen worth all that effort Here, he is a selfabsorbed, selfmythologising, selfdestructive character, His Archibald Prize win is well behind him, for a loose, garish, broadbrush rendering of actor David Wenham, And though Cullen clings to this prize for validation, its reception irks him he lives easily enough with being a celebrated bad boy winning a conservative prize for a conventional genre, but denounces the misplaced rapture of the prize's middlebrow mostly female audience, who rhapsodise over actorasgentlequirkyhearthrob Seachange's Diver Dan and misrecognise actoraspsychoticrapistmurdered The Boys' Brett Sprague.
Cullen coaxes and cajoles his biographer with promises of an unlikely book deal the kind of promise that could have been easily confirmed perhaps Jensen's failure to do so is meant to be understood as a sign of his own naivety.
He then uneasily, unsteadily grooms the writer for what While Jensen is determined he won't become a hagiographer, he falls into a role as witness and confessor, an uneasy companion and a guarded collaborator.
I liked the thematic chapters a hard act to pull off, but done very effectively here, But they do mean some possibly key aspects of Cullen's life are elided or unexamined, Early exposure to art through a family venture to Spain, for one, A tenyear relationship with Carrie Lumby, for another, The structures of power, influence and celebrity within the Sydney art scene are barely sketched, reduced to bogeys and straw men,
Cullen is confident in his own intelligence and erudition, but mainly we just get railing against those who misunderstand him, and predictable references to artistic and literary precursors Goya, Nolan and Whiteley are mainstays.
Perhaps Cullen's smarts and charm, and the unavoidable disciplines of artmaking, had deserted him by this stage, but it would have been good to have a greater sense of them.
A final observation: this is one reading that really suffered from a Acute Misfortune's advance publicity, When an author withholds a critical discussion to late in the book, cleverly pairing
it with early scenesetting misadventures, it's a pity to have already encountered all that, extracted as a promotional prologue.
What abides is a study in an author's relationship with his subject, layered, provocative and compelling to read, Though I grew impatient with its narrow focus, I suspect much of it will continue to resonate, As a artist I never understood the high profile Adam established, A man living in a delusional world who comes across as a tormented soul using drugs and alcohol on a fast lane to destruction, This was a man who needed help, I ended the book torn between being empathic to his troubles and also as a complete bastard, A true story about an Australian artist, So atrociously told, that the guy who bought this book me suffered "Acute Misfortune, " Author Erik Jensen was advised not to write a 'dainty' book about artist friend Adam Cullen and there's certainly nothing 'dainty' about his long association with a troubled but talented man.
Sometimes their two lives seem to merge into one and this was what Jensen always resisted about their association, finally ignoring persistent calls from a dying man whose demands just became too much.
It was Cullen's win in theArchibald that sealed his popularity despite much of his art celebrating the 'grunge' and unpalatable aspects of life.
Many even misunderstood the spirit of the Wenham portrait, seeing Wenham more as 'Seachange' rather than the dark horrific 'The Boys',
The acute addiction to drugs and alcohol, the declining health of Cullen who died it seems because his body broke down, unable to resist the ravages of his excesses is all chronicled here in horrible detail.
But Cullen was a man committed to experiencing the totality of life, braver than many of us would be and dedicated to his art as a sort of vocation.
Jensen's book is a work of love for a man who always seemed to resist love and it's unsurprising that Jensen himself could only sit in a bath and weep when he heard the news of Cullen's death.
This is not an easy book but as Christos Tsiolkas says, it's a 'marvellous, propulsive, intelligent read, ' I'd known who Adam Cullen was from the papers rather than his art, at least initially, He was the eminently quotable prick who had issues with his mum, and was a bit of a lair, given to creating sculptures out of random shit, and artwork that was distinguished from that of a truculent kid by dint of the violence bubbling underneath it.
I'd seen his Archibald winners and nonstarters, but hearing him constantly referred to as an enfant terrible or similar made me a bit leery of learning more.
And then he died, and at least some of the obits made me think there might be a bit more to the story,
Fast forward a couple of years, sitelinkand the movie based on this book, Acute Misfortune, shows up, I catch it because of Daniel Henshall's phenomenal presence, and decide I have to read the source, So here I am. And bugger me, but the Acute Misfortune's just as good,
Well, almost.
That said, if you've read the book but haven't seen the film, seek it out, It's brilliant, and brings to life the struggles within in a quietly grim way, sitelinkI wrote about it here,
The book is a description of the author's interactions with the artist, which include stints in hospital, shootings, road accidents, endless phone calls and the offer to write a biography that never appears to have existed.
Erik Jensen is as key to the story as its subject, and indeed appears to be interwoven with the emotions and struggles of Cullen, even when he's moved cities to get away from the guy.
It's hard to consider this work a biography, because it doesn't stick to the regular biographical format, It doesn't present a steady stream of dates, nor does it truck with the sort of minutiae which most biographers sprinkle throughout, like wheatgerm on cereal.
It's a portrait of an artist, but it's about motivation, about drive, The art is secondary, really, As Jensen notes in an email exchange here, he's not trying to write a worshipful portrait, It's as if he's trying to squeeze the marrow out of his subject: not to explain what he is, but to present more of an idea of why he is.
The book I am writing contains, I hope, no myth, It is a story of abused talent and excess pathos, It is an account of a man whose lifetime of bravado exhausted him and alienated those around him, but in whose gentle nature there might be some explanation for this impulse.
All journalism involves the Sisyphean task of trying to understand other people and in this I have been dealt a boulder called Adam,
So it's a portrait of a guy who's very used to bending the truth to suit his own narrative, or perception of events.
And it's a portrait of toxic masculinity as it destroys a bloke from the inside, inescapably corrosive,
And as such, it's remarkable, Jensen waswhen he started taking notes for the nonexistent tome Cullen had charged him with writing, and though the youthfulness naiveté of that age isn't all that present in the book, a drive to explain, to know that's common to early adulthood is.
There's a sense throughout that Cullen is somehow trying to tutor Jensen in his road warrior lifestyle: this is a guy who referred to himself as Mad Max, after all.
But there's no way anyone not even Cullen himself can keep up with the intoxicant intake and relentless, blazing grimness of the artist's point of view.
The art is written about, and it makes a lot more sense to me now, I suspect, It makes a lot of sense that Cullen's portrait of David Wenham is painted as Brett Sprague from The Boys rather than Diver Dan from SeaChange the horror of the suburban, the defeat of the everyday is key to the artist's oeuvre.
His work, as Cullen freely admits, is all surface: what you see is what there is, And yet, his skill is in making you want to see more,
The truth is that by the end hell, even before that all there is to Cullen is addiction, anger and sickness, Even the art falls away, really, And so all there is is all you see: a sick, dying, then dead man, ravaged by the drives he couldn't explain too well, much less control.
A guy who couldn't be his father the flirtatious builder bloke as hard as he'd tried, An artist. A fuckup. A bad friend but a good quote,
“Its the only profession in the world where your employer wants you to die, ” I think, in this strangely griefless church, it is perhaps the most honest description he gave of his career, I count up the art dealers in the room: there are four,
Am I misreading it Reading too much into it Could be, But the book is great, and a quick read, I wish it were longer, but then I suppose so does Cullen,
.