on myth-making

There is as much to say about Piero Manzoni,the artist,
as there is to say about his work. They are, more or less,
inextricably bound to one another. His case is much like
that of Warhol, Beuys, Duchamp, or for that matter,
Hilna af Klimt. When an artist takes the risk of creating a self-invested myth,
the repercussions that follow may appear overwhelming.
The shorter the lifespan, the more likely the myth will survive.

Robert C. Morgan, here

To change your art, Beuys would instruct, change yourself.
A fellow-student, fancying a resemblence in photographs,
dubbed Peter Heisterkamp Blinky Palermo,
after a Philadelphia fight fixer and ex-con...
Beuys approved. What's in a pseudonym?
How would it affect the aura of nineteen-twenties
Paris if Man Ray had kept his birth name of
Emmanuel Radnitsky, or that of the sixties
everywhere if their essential voice answered
to Robert Zimmerman? A gaudy alias may
express identification with a radically new sensibility,
stepping Venus-like from the surf of history.

Peter Schjeldahl, here

(image via)