I had the opportunity to meet Neil Gaiman in 2010. I was delighted. I am posting this short conversation below. I don’t want to forget it.
Do you think pop culture is the kind of bag into which we can throw whatever we want and mix it up?
Neil Gaiman: I am always very suspicious of people who try to divide culture into low and high. I think what exists is good or bad art. I like pop culture. I like the idea of taking everything you see when you leave home and making up stories out of it. For me, that’s what pop culture is: everything we see and hear here and now. But I don’t like to think that there are things I can’t put into that bag, that there are things that are too classic or too important. So everything is pop culture or nothing is.
What is good art to you? What is valuable?
Good art can be good just because someone thinks it is. Sometimes good art is something in spite of the fact that it’s done strangely or that the person who did it didn’t have the technical skills, but knew what he was doing. And that’s what makes it better, that’s what makes it art. Bad art is that made by people who don’t believe in what they want to say, don’t believe in what they want to paint, what they want to create, and then it has no soul and it doesn’t matter how well technically done it is.
Do you believe in the existence of kitsch? What is it for you?
I like the word “kitsch.” For me, this word refers to the strange quality that something has that is quite nice or so bad that it is good. These things have charm. Sometimes they even have charm in spite of themselves. And sometimes it’s the context that makes them charming. E.g. we can have a lousy fridge magnet from the 1970s that takes on a whole new meaning in a 2010 home, it’s no longer the thing it was, but if we put it back in a 1970s home it would be ugly again. For me, kitsch is charm, grace.
Is there anything that you collect?
I collect the works of some painters, illustrators such as Harry Clarke a great Irish illustrator who created from about 1910, I have 8 works by Barry Windsor Smith, Franc C. Pape… These are artists I like. In addition, he collects books….
And what Polish authors do you appreciate?
When I was growing up, of course, I read Stanislaw Lem, a world-class writer, in translation. He was one of those writers who showed me as a very young boy that science-fiction is literature….
The photo at the top is a stained glass window by Harry Clarke. I learned about this wonderful artist just during this talk. I took the photo in 2023 at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.