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Velvet Buzzsaw covered this topic goofily but it did bring up an interesting point. Posthumously denying a painter’s desire for privacy is a nearly voyeuristic act of greed. I haven’t read into this enough to know whether Goya wanted privacy, but it still reminded me.
nearly voyeuristic act of greed
Uh, no. Saturn is in the Museo del Prado. Society is immeasurably richer for it. Kafka wanted his stories burned when he died. Good thing his executor just ignored him.
“My desire to pretend I’m a cultured intellectual for profit is more important than the privacy and explicit wishes of a dead person who trusted me.”
You have no right to anyone else’s private thoughts and creations.
Art exists separate from the artist. If Goya wanted to destroy it, he could have anytime while he was alive. Obviously he liked it a lot.
What, do you think his ghost is embarrassed that the world loves his secret paintings? This is some fake moralist privacy shit.
What, do you think his ghost is embarrassed that the world loves his secret paintings?
No, I’m just not an asshole who thinks I’m entitled to other people’s personal things.
I guess you’ve never heard that “good artists borrow and great artists steal”? I think some no talent bum, who never made great art, said that.
I keep saying this in court when dealing with copyright claims but it seems like it only works for rich people to steal others ideas and profit off them
Max Brod claimed he told Kaka he wasn’t going to burn his works and that he needed to appoint a different executor if he wanted that. We don’t have anything more than Brod’s word, but if it’s true, that makes it hard to feel bad about him getting Kafka published.
I would also add that Kafka did very much publish stuff when he was alive; he wasn’t a tortured genius writing in secret, he was like, writing short stories for the newspaper. He published a novella of his weird random ramblings on things. He was probably kinda known as the bug guy before he died.
Also like, some of his longer posthumously published books are very obviously not finished. I’d wager Kafka’s statement is less a tortured artist thing and more of a “this book straight up doesn’t have an ending why would you publish it” or “please don’t my editor is probably going to try and finish it” thing. Should you publish an author’s clearly unfinished work is a completely different question with different arguments
