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Pop Culture
Dec 15, 2023, 06:29AM

Then Nothing Else Matters

A 2003 The Progressive interview with author Kurt Vonnegut vs. a 2014 ART PAPERS interview with visual artist Joyce Pensato.

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Joyce Pensato: This is the place where the juices are floating, where you feel comfortable to be who you are, and if I just want to lie on the lounge chair for a month or two, I can do it.

Kurt Vonnegut: Now it’s like a banana cream pie three feet in diameter dropped from a stepladder four feet high.

Pensato: It’s almost like a billboard.

Vonnegut: Well, of course. Very warm, very enthusiastic.

Pensato: We get the big fat Japanese brushes and splash on the paint.

•••

Vonnegut: For instance, I have to be very careful with irony, saying something while meaning the exact opposite.

Pensato: Well, you meditate and space out.

Vonnegut: Then nothing else matters.

Pensato: It’s like the Weegee photograph where somebody drowned and there’s this woman smiling at the camera.

Vonnegut: One good thing about TV is, if you die violently, God forbid, on camera, you will not have died in vain because you will be great entertainment.

•••

Pensato: Superman is too human, Superman has a real face—I like disguises; I like masks.

Vonnegut: I got to know him late in his life when he’d become a local CIO official.

Pensato: He [is] also very expressive: he can look angry, he can look very vulnerable …

Vonnegut: Yes, he did. Socialism is, in fact, a form of Christianity, people wishing to imitate Christ.

Pensato: Gena Rowlands with a gun and then De Niro, all bloody, they’re me, both of them.

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