Some artists see an infinite number of movies. [Peter] Hutchinson, for instance, instead of going to the country to study nature, will go to see a movie on 42nd Street, like “Horror of Party Beach,” two or three times and contemplate it for weeks on end. The movies give a ritual pattern to the lives of many artists, and this induces a kind of low-budget mysticism, which keeps them in a perpetual trance. (The “blood and guts” of horror movies provides for their “organic needs,” while the “cold steel” of Sci-fi movies provides for their “inorganic needs.” Serious movies are too heavy on “values,” and so are dismissed by the more perceptive artists. Such artists have X-ray eyes, and can see through all of that cloddish substance that passes for “the deep and profound” these days.
- Robert Smithson