Wild Thing
Childish’s output is so vast, and his back catalogue so deeply buried, that only he is familiar with its full extent; the rest of us have to make do with whatever fragments we can lay our hands on. Plus, the art, literature, and music scenes are all so thoroughly siloed nowadays that it isn’t uncommon for, say, admirers of his paintings to know nothing about his records, or for listeners of those records to care little, in turn, about the paintings (Postmodernism only ever paid lip service to the idea of effacing the High/Low divide: if the gallery and the street ever got too close, the one would lose too much cash, the other too much cool; historically, Childish has cared little for either). Hence, ‘Who is Billy Childish…?’ is immediately complicated by another question: ‘Whose Billy Childish?’
Oscar Mardell reviews To Ease My Troubled Mind: The Authorised Unauthorised History of Billy Childish by Ted Kessler.