Mar
9th
Sun
9th
“For the sake of art, it was his preposterous ambition to translate himself from a Boston banker into a genius. He studied genius-hood as his friends studied the conventions, or contract bridge, and he decided, with terrible calculation, to short cut his way to genius by way of madness. Harry Crosby is an entire laboratory wherein may be studied the terminal consequences of the religion of art. Almost alone among the outlaw artists of his time, he translated every aesthetic notion - so long as it was sufficiently wayward, outre, and violent - into acts. In his life he lived a dangerous metaphor: Art is magic. The magician is a god.”
-Geoffrey Wolff, Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby.