AustLit

'This essay makes a case for considering the depiction of the artist Adam Cullen in Erik Jensen's biography of him, Acute Misfortune, as good grounds for rethinking the political potential of Cullen's art. This is especially clear in Jensen's treatment of Cullen's own self-estimation of occupying a special, existentially free, political space in which he could use his art to show the less attractive side of neo-liberal and mundane middle-class life. Jensen shows, through a careful and literary retelling of significant events in the final years of Cullen's life, that the freedom he claimed to possess might more accurately be described as serving the agenda of neoliberalism, in which the works of the troubled artist were collected as decorative pieces. While not underestimating the force of Cullen's oeuvre, Jensen points to an interesting and unintended consequence of Cullen's art, noticeable at his funeral, that the extreme actions of the enfant terrible did more to create lasting human connections than it did to separate them. The biography thus speaks against the power of art to create new political spaces and yet simultaneously celebrate Cullen's art for showing us our own flawed psyches.’ (Introduction)