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I recently read this play for a job I was working on. The discussion between Foxes and Hedgehogs is fascinating.
Once again the ancient adage that Archilochus evolved (later popularised by Isaiah Berlin) seems particularly apposite in Rothko’s case: “The fox knows many things – the hedgehog knows one big thing.” It’s an interesting binary exercise to divide artists into hedgehogs or foxes, and the New York School of abstract expressionists (with the exception of Willem de Kooning) can only be described as a pack, a flock of hedgehogs. It’s a matter of temperament, sheer gift and inclination if you find yourself a hedgehog or a fox. Da Vinci is a fox genius, Vermeer a hedgehog. Freud is a hedgehog, David Hockney is a fox. Graham Sutherland is a fox, Francis Bacon is a hedgehog – and so on. Certain artists know “one big thing” – they can do “one big thing” – and it shapes the art they make.
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Every year, thousands of 20-something guys and girls pack up their cars, leave their beloved suburban towns and head west to Los Angeles. And with good reason. LA is the international capital of television and motion pictures. Argue all you want about other places — Ne w York, New Orleans, Vancouver and Eastern Europe — but when all is said and done, LA is where you need to be. Granted, that may change over the next ten years, but as of 2010, LA is still the place.
