Courtney Love Plays Scholar At Guggenheim's Cattelan Closing

Courtney Love, “AND THIS IS WAR”

“Movie stars need to be alive. Artists need to be dead,” said Courtney Love, in one of her opening remarks at the Guggenheim’s “Last Word” conference. And I was struck by how, well, intelligent the observation was. The last time I had seen Ms. Love perform was with her band Hole at Washington D.C.’s 9:30 Club in 2010, where after a string of disasters, including tirades against critics and audience members, she removed her shirt and performed an encore topless. That train wreck bore absolutely no resemblance to this poised, clothed (if slightly short-skirted) woman, who with glasses, podium, and prepared notes seemed more likely to lecture on Roland Barthes than flash her breasts. Her chosen epitaph, the appropriately antonymous and angrily cap-locked “AND THIS IS WAR,” directly challenged the tawdry image of herself splashed across the pages of public opinion. [Courtney Love] Her revelations ranged in wisdom, but each added depth to a character society would insist was flat. Much of it addressed her formative years: “I had a trust fund…just a small one,” she said, winking at the audience, while alluding to the numerous boarding schools she had been expelled from. Class, or class perception, seemed to have mattered a great deal in her family. Her mother once slapped her for saying, “Yabba, dabba, doo!” an expression she considered too “middle-class” for her daughter to speak aloud. As a child, Ms. Love yearned for fame: “I thought, all I want to do is feel famous…[I thought:] Fame will protect me from bad people.” She perceived celebrity at the time as a protective "white light" that would guide her through her troubles. Introspective and reflective, she discussed the shattering of this youthful misconception, and addressed both the highs and lows of her life in the spotlight. Not short-skirting her way around her infamy, Ms. Love revealed that she once googled her name with the word “drunk,” and was surprised by the number of hits (around 2.5 million). “I’ve only been drunk 8 or 9 times in my life,” she swore, citing the drugs as the primary cause of her past erratic behavior.  And how many hits came up when she googled "Courtney Love" and "sexy"?  "Only one," she said, sadly. In a tie-in with Mr. Cattalen, Ms. Love discussed her new occupation as a visual artist.  She's been drawing sketches and marketing them to potential art buyers, one of whom raised a particular drawing's value because she may have drawn it "on the toilet," she laughed. She also revealed that billionaire men tend to flock to her in order to share their own problems and addictions.  One in particular, an unnamed prominent art dealer, discussed his conflicted emotions about wishing artist friends like David LaChapelle dead, so that their collections would increase in value.  The secret troubled Ms. Love, who after discussing the problem with her psychiatrist, concluded that for successful businessmen, enough can never be enough.  Be it the accumulation of art or its creation, businessmen or artists, "When we quit, we're dead," Ms. Love sagely concluded. It was nearly 2:00 a.m. before she strutted off the stage, svelte and sober, a woman clearly not ready to call it quits.