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On page 181 of Greg Bottoms' 182 page documentary book
" The Colorful Apocalypse ", Mr. Bottoms reveals that
"a narrative is not life, and a moment in text is
not a moment, only a made thing that presents the illusion of a moment. I
did my best, though, to make these illusions look and feel like life, at
least as I experienced it; and then, perhaps like a documentary filmmaker,
I tried to string together and juxtapose some of what seemed to me to be
the most meaningful moments in a way that made sense and told the story as
I saw it."
How I wish Bottoms had inserted that incredibly
revealing statement on page one or even page two! Having read this
admission of Bottoms belief in a new style of documentary writing or
filmmaking, I clearly could have read the rest of the book with a better
understanding of the intent of the writer, that to create a documentary
somewhat like "a documentary filmmaker". You see, for the most part, the
book purports to detail the life and times of three powerful visionary
artists each on his own mission...Howard Finster, William Thomas Thompson
and Norbert Kox. And naturally, in the telling of any true story, most
authors are granted an amount of leeway for imagination and trivial
inventiveness. But Bottoms attempt at being a documentarian fails, falling
far into the pit of his own tragic life and its colorful distortion of
what lay before him but remained hidden by his laziness and his rush to
satisfy grant requirements. As I did not know Mr.
Finster, my understanding of the "illusions" presented in Bottoms' book
comes from my familiarity with the art and life of Mr. Thompson and Mr.
Kox. And as I do not know Mr. Bottoms save through his writings on the
tragedy of his personal life and how it has colored his views towards us
all, I can only deal with what he reveals about the pain and hurt and
amateur psychology that most obviously will control the rest of his life
and possibly that of his offspring. Throughout the book
sections dealing with Mr. Thompson and Mr. Kox, Bottoms consistently
attempts to shoehorn the artists' fervent and steadfast belief in the
vision that drives the creation of their art into the same stagnant swamp
that produced Bottoms' violent and drug-handicapped brother. Bottoms seems
to say repeatedly that his brother's uncontrolled and unleashed mental
disorder shares a relative with the "Christian Poor South", a class Bottoms
proudly and often reminds us that he has become "one generation removed from".
Would that he could run from his brother as easily in telling the lives of
these two men but he can't. His brother's madness apparently stamped its
image and direction on his soul and in the tips of his hands where skin
meets pen. Bottoms too frequently and emphatically compares the
unbending will of the visionary artist to the black insanity emanating
from within his family. Initially, I believed Bottoms had practiced
typical lazy writing, an affliction common to those facing a deadline or
lacking any insight into their subject. But as I read and reread the book,
more seemed to be at work, especially in Bottoms retelling of the seminal
moment in Mr. Thompson's life. I have listened to Mr.
Thompson many times...in person, in letters (email) and by phone...on his
epiphany, the vision he experienced that has changed his life forever.
That telling, the clear vision, has never changed. Never. No matter how
many times I listened, the same events, the same times, the same results
would reveal themselves. It is this reliably repetitive telling that has
allowed me to know the truth behind the words he relates and the
legitimacy of Mr. Thompson's art as influenced by his vision. Bottoms
asserts that he listened to the same man I have tell the events I have
heard over and over but writes an account that clearly is
"only a made thing". However, Bottoms claims it as
documentary-level truth while relaying that his new version of Mr.
Thompson's life-changing vision now has the stamp of authenticity and
replaces the original. Bottoms also claims that this type of thing happens
to those types of people, those people of his brother and of that
"Christian Poor South" that he has proudly
become "one generation removed from". The entire
section of Colorful Apocalypse dealing with Mr. Thompson's important and
driving event has been fabricated by Bottoms in the telling. Probably just
Bottoms trying to
"string together and juxtapose some of what seemed
to me to be the most meaningful moments in a way that made sense and told
the story as I saw it." I don't think it can be that simple.
Simple it would be to pick out little things, cast-away remarks....locked
in a tower, lips painted red, a deaf mother, a Mr. T brother yelling
confusing lies...Bottoms claims as truth. And simple it would be to claim
these burdensome, burgeoning lies as the subjective rant of
"an amateur", of this
"Camus instead of Joyce." Oh how simple to claim the book could
have been four or five hundred pages instead of the most important, the
most relevant 182 pages. And as a publisher, how really simple life is
when you disavow responsibility for an unrelenting page-after-page of
seemingly fabricated dreams by claiming the subjective nature of the
author and his quest to be free of the bonds that tie all good men
trumping any right to factual reporting of
"whole reels" of recordings that ended up in the trash. What simple
author, one just feeling the breeze, trying to relate to the subject at
hand in his own manner records hours of conversation, writes books of
notes? Simple...none. No one, no writer wanting to catch the dissipating
mist of an idea, the fleet-footed wing of a mood takes mounds of notes,
records reels of tape. In art terms, Monet took no photographs in his
attempt to show that which made him feel, a feat Bottoms and his publisher
claim as the true sojourn of this wounded but courageous young master. Yet
Bottoms claims to have done just that. And most incredibly, Bottoms
asserts that he forever consulted those hard-copy proofs of his trek
across his beloved Poor South. Bottoms claims that it was
"the help of tapes and transcripts" that
jogged his soaked memory, that cleared-up the hazy remembrance of his
quest to show "a sliver of a sliver" of the
outsider art world in a "willfully subjective
presentation". In those three words...willfully
subjective presentation...Bottoms again empties his bowels of the
honest and humble notion of showing that which is before you. Bottoms
reveals to all his readers, unfortunately on the last page of his book,
that he will stubbornly press his daggered life and times into that which
he sees and hears from the two men I know in his book. Bottoms defines for
the reader that he will stubbornly present that which belongs to Bottoms
as the visionary force behind Thompson and Kox rather than the vision held
by these two men and their presentation of that vision in their art. In
doing so, Bottoms and his publisher place excessive, misleading and
damaging emphasis on Bottoms' own moods and tragedy-filled life while expressing almost total
disregard for the truths of his subjects' experience.
Simple it would be to pick out the simple lies and fabrications. Simple,
too, to dispute those picks, as an author or publisher, with claims of
subjectivity and eye-of-the-beholder speak. But running from that stated truth
eventually becomes complicated.
Bottoms has crafted a book that adheres to a tenet he claims to live by in
his hobby as a "journalist....a kind of documentary
filmmaker". As he so eloquently quotes on page 122 (deep into his
assault), Bottoms asserts that he will gain his story by approaching his
victims with the purpose of "gaining their trust and betraying them
without remorse". Bottoms claims, in an unusual statement on how to
live and, even worse, how to treat others, that this is the only way (in
his role as a kind of documentary filmmaker)
to make sense out of his travels amongst the people he has met. To act as
a sort of confidence man, bankrupted of the quest for the true story,
while wedging Bottoms' own view of madness between himself and his
subjects' story. This is a complicated run at producing a book, at getting
a story, such as the one he has created, published. Bottoms found, indeed
is employed by, conspirators in his mission and others who embrace any
version of a story as long as they don't have to learn anything on their
own.
I could go on and on but am becoming bored with Bottoms, his book and the
lazy attempt he has created to distance himself not only from that "poor
Christian South" that courses through his family's veins but in an attempt
to find in many others the madness that creeps slowly up on him from
behind, in the dark corners of his eyes. I'll close with a listing of
Bottoms' revelatory musings and will translate them so that you, his
unfortunate reader, may somehow get through the book without the madness
that may have afflicted Bottoms:
Talking about Finster, Bottoms claims to have seen a movie on him when he
was a youngster but not watching it again, fourteen years later, before
starting a book on the man because "In my imperfect
recollection of the film( I haven't watched it again so as not to destroy
my memory with a lesser reality), Finster played ...a banjer."
Translation: Bottoms views his unaided recollection
as more valid than the actual recorded event so much so that he does not
view the material again out of fear of getting it right. It appears that,
in Bottoms' mind, the recorded version has become the "lesser
reality" and his attempt to "make
sense out of what I saw" has replaced the
true version. Very unusual and complicated.
Bottoms uses quotes by his subjects that deal with other matters in
sentences wholly crafted by him to illustrate his own views. In one case,
relating an AVAM meeting with a young fan of Mr. Thompson's, Bottoms feels
the fan has gotten the message of a painting wrong, that the fan is all
bundled up in pimples and piercing, unable to grasp the vision he thinks
Mr. Thompson meant to portray. Bottoms writes that he wonders why Mr.
Thompson doesn't "shoot fire out of his mouth"
and tell the fan about "Jesus being a white
guy". Translation: Bottoms repeatedly (to
quote them all would make me just as much a prisoner as to Bottoms'
upbringing as his brother has become) inserts attributions in wholly
crafted views that seem to assert those attributions belong to his
subjects when they are clearly created and owned in Bottoms own past and
family life. In the process, because of the way Bottoms presents the text,
his subjects are damaged through Bottoms own limited understanding.
Bottoms often and erroneously compares his subjects to what he believes
are certified nutcases. In one particularly damning claim, Bottoms states
that he has used his own sense of the issues to determine that Mr.
Thompson is just like August Natterer. Translation:
Unfortunately, the only clear link between Natterer (a hospitalized,
suicidal schizophrenic who was unable to function in society and spent
most of the last 26 years of his life locked away in institutions for the
insane) and Mr. Thompson is that they both claimed to have had a vision.
Doubly unfortunately for Mr. Thompson, Bottoms emphatically and forever has
linked him with someone unable to get through life on his own, a man who
claimed to read the future and predict great events, not a man who was
spreading a vision not of his own making, as Mr. Thompson does in his art.
Bottoms refers to Mr. Thompson and his art repeatedly in marketing terms,
variously referring to Thompson's art as "currently
hot", claiming that "his eccentricity is in
direct accordance to his value as an artist and he is highly valued at
this time" and , in text, implying a contrivance by Thompson to
engender a "hard sell" of his work and
vision. Bottoms also links Thompson's presence at American Visionary Art
Museum (AVAM) with a type of cheap barkerism.
Translation: Bottoms damages Thompson's presentation of his vision through
his art by repeatedly connecting Thompson's attempts at creating on canvas
that which drives him to an art world and process that Thompson cares
little about and has never embraced. Bottoms claims that the most
respected and presentable venue for Thompson's work, the American
Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, acts like a pimp to Thompson's supposed whoring
ways. Bottoms denigrates AVAM and Thompson and holds them both up to
unanswered ridicule by describing scene after scene that seems at odds
with Thompson's stated mission to get the word out about his work. Bottoms
even suggests that the presence of a snack shop and accoutrements in the
museum somehow invalidates all else within, including Thompson's art
In one particularly indecipherable passage, Bottoms links Mr. Thompson's
concentration on his vision and work with the life of Gerald Hawkes, "a
poor heroin addict from the ghettos of Baltimore" and with the life
of William Burroughs, "who shot his wife and shot up
in Warhol's factory". Bottoms does this by claiming that Thompson
ignores the differences in the two nutcases work, that somehow Thompson
refusal to consider their art points to character flaws in the man. No
real translation for this one.
Bottoms, without attribution or quotes, out of hand states that Thompson
would send all Buddhists to hell.
Bottoms assigns to Mr. Thompson an encompassing and devouring depression.
Bottoms repeatedly refers to cases of depression in others, including
rampant prevalence of the disease throughout Bottoms' own
addicted-handicapped family, as somehow being assigned through dictum to
Thompson. Bottoms pulls the little knowledge of history of the outsider
art movement he has from the black, grainy pit of his own experience and
brushes across the entire field, including splashing across Thompson and
his work. Translation: Bottoms lazily takes what
admittedly little he knows about art, outsider art and life and decides to
present this small vial of poison as the facts in his "documentary
filmmaker" presentation of Thompson and Kox's
life.
Bottoms presents so much unusual text and silly links that I guess I could
go on for days and days. But, as I've said, I am bored with this and must
stop. This is as good a place to stop as any
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I am reviewing this book on my own, this Colorful
Apocalypse, after reading it twice cover to cover, reading most of it more
times than I can count and after concentrating on Mr. Thompson's portrayal
more so than the rest. As I've said, I know Mr. Thompson and know Mr. Kox
less so. Most of my review deals with the parts related to Mr. Thompson.
It is as clear to me as the sky above that Bottoms not
only has created a fictional account of the time spent with Mr. Thompson
but that Bottoms has also created a message and vision that belongs only
to Bottoms. In interviews conducted after the publishing, Bottoms does
what most con men do when removed from their craft...they invent a
persona and become it for the interviewer. Bottoms claims in an interview
that "I also wanted to let them speak for themselves at length, more at
length than I might otherwise, in another project." He asserts that he
documented, consulted, recorded and vetted what he wrote, that he alone
respects the message these visionary artists have embraced and show in
their art. He accuses many galleries and museums of attempting to "collect
stories and package them and offer them up" in some unusual conspiracy of
capitalism that denigrates the vision. He says that, for
the most part, they miss the important message behind most visionary art
and Thompson's in particular and accuses galleries and museums of
deadening the message. Bottoms, naturally, initially sees himself above
all this in a way a documentarian is above advertising. But, in his pseudo
artistic and martyred style designed to engender a feeling of motherly
love for Bottoms, he then asks "Well, what the hell do I do?" when
referring to how he spends time with his victims only to report on them
later for his own enrichment.
Time after time in Colorful Apocalypse, Bottoms
intimates that Mr. Thompson suffers great depression because of the way he
acts and what he says but provides no proof. Bottoms states that it is
wrong to equate madness with freedom, wrong to disenfranchise artists in
the way AVAM does, according to him, but provides to backup to his
thoughts save for the background he has dealing with a nutcase in his own
family. Seemingly, we the readers, are to blindly accept Bottoms as a
visionary psychologist because there exists a frightening homicidal
madness enveloping his won family. He asks us to believe that he is manner
clairvoyant because he has suffered under familial insanity. But, I don't
buy it. I don't believe he sees that true nature of people anymore than a
tree knows its being wet down by the dog lifting its leg right next to it.
I don't accept Bottoms cutesy, trifled style of denying his attempt at
documentary writing by claiming, as he does, that he is a master
memoirist, that his goal was to live with, to breathe with, to listen to
his victims. The proof that he did none of what he claims in interviews
conducted the book was published exists in the Colorful Apocalypse. His
book damns the stated goals, the espoused life-journey-as-writer that he
wears like a red badge of courage. I think Bottoms is neither
documentarian nor memoirist, illuminated writer nor sparkling recorder,
not insightful author nor accomplished feeling-because-I've-been-hurt
puppy dog. I think what Bottoms has produced is a con. And that con marks
him more than any claim else.
I'm bored again. Maybe more later.
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