Acute Misfortune Quotes

“I’m so used to absolute freedom. I can shit anywhere. I can piss anywhere. I can take drugs. I can kill things. But in there I was nothing,” he says. “For the first time in my life I felt what Ned Kelly felt. The last month has been hell. I don’t think I was that mad. My own illness is news to me. They say that I’m borderline bipolar. That was odd – not to have the diagnosis but to swallow the diagnosis.”
― Erik Jensen, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen

“Adam Cullen was a unique and larger-than-life figure in contemporary Australian art,” it began. “His public persona obscured to a certain extent his significant contribution to art practice … The pathos of his subject matter also has a form of abject beauty, the beauty of the decayed and coming apart, of a humanity that is to be found in failed endeavours, misunderstandings and missed connections.”
― Erik Jensen, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen

“With art, when you’re making something completely fucking useless, you can lose your sense of play. But for me everything is fun. If I lose that sense of play, I would just die or fade away. I love it because it’s so useless. It’s the most indulgent thing you can do, to make art. It’s so fucking selfish and I love it. I reckon I’m worth eight thousand dollars an hour, and the rest.”
― Erik Jensen, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen

“the meaning of Adam’s work sat on its surface, that he had no opinion of his subjects, good or bad: “Cullen’s abjectness is not luxury at ease; his emptiness is not profundity; when he scribbles, his poor syntax is not a form of epigram. His crudeness is what it is – unabashed … He’s a bottom-feeder, none too pernickety about taste. Every pond needs one, especially the cesspools of popular culture.”
― Erik Jensen, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen

“Adam almost never painted from life. His pictures were transcriptions. The text was harvested from popular culture, lifted from late-night television: phrases repeated aloud, over and over, until they had either shed or gained meaning. There was no judgement and little empathy.”
― Erik Jensen, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen

“Bulletin a decade earlier, his definition of art: “It’s 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.”
― Erik Jensen, Acute Misfortune: The Life and Death of Adam Cullen