Teasdale, Paul, Moyra Davey, Frieze, #44, London ... - Greengrassi

POLYVALENCE
BY MOYRA DAVEY
THE TERM MUSE is mired in a sexist
stereotype that may be impossible to
shed, connoting, say, Pablo Picasso
and Françoise Gilot—the nitty-gritty
of an older man attaching himself to
a woman 40 years his junior—or Art
Nouveau’s embodiment of the muses of
Greek antiquity in images of vaporous
femininity. I know that I once used the
term when I referred to my friend Alison
Strayer, the writer and translator, as my
“reading muse.” She has been introducing
me to books since we were both
15, starting with works by Colette, Jean
Rhys and Jane Bowles—and the list
goes on and on. But even then I felt a bit
sheepish about using the word. It seems
unbalanced, even arrogant, to assume
the role of “creator” for oneself while
assigning the role of “helper” to another.
I was never a good student,
stubbornly doing my own thing,
CURRENTLY ON VIEW
Works by Moyra Davey in
“New Photography 2011,”
Museum of Modern Art, New
York, through Jan. 16.
engrossed in my projects and not listening
very closely to what was being
taught. Consequently, I don’t have a
tool kit stocked with learned strategies
for making art. In the 1946 noir
classic Gilda, the character Johnny
Farrell says: “I make my own luck.”
And that is what I’ve been trying to
do in a haphazard, muddled fashion
for most of my life.
I don’t believe in muse, per se. I
believe that you plug away at things,
I trust in luck, and I
know about intellectual
generosity from
friends like Alison.
She has an unstoppable
flow of ideas
and will eagerly talk
anything through
with me, but I won’t
presume to call her
my muse. My partner,
Jason Simon,
also has a highly creative,
analytical mind
and will talk through
ideas—but again,
I simply consider
myself lucky to be on the
receiving end of the beneficence
of my friends.
If anything, muse is a floating
abstraction that reveals
itself unpredictably. It seems
to come from nowhere, but
in fact is rooted in words,
language, books, the process
of reading. I believe that you
should fill yourself up with
good things, the things that
give you pleasure, make
you happy, give you a high,
a spark, a thrill. And then, if
you’re lucky, one or two of
those good things will find
their way back to you when
you least expect it and most
need it. Those moments
when, as Louise Bourgeois
would say, you are in need of
a solution to a problem.
I can give two examples of this
mysterious process at work. I was in
Paris in 2008-09 with a grant to make
a video. I had a studio with a desk
I’d dutifully chain myself to every day
in an attempt to write the script. I
spent eight miserable months trying
to shape a tangle of notes from my
journals, some of which concerned
a letter Walter Benjamin wrote in
1931 describing his new study and
the view from its window of a clock.
40 ART IN AMERICA JANUARY’12