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In response to a thought-provoking post by our fellow geminaut ~nsequeira119 I would like to offer some comments and digressions.
When someone says something like "I live in Chicago" you don't assume that this person thinks everyone lives there or should move there. A typical reply might be "Well, I live in Utrecht," or whatever your location happens to be, and that reply might be taken as a mild retort to an unspoken assumption that only Chicago matters. This example of course is contrived to the point of parody, but you might hear similar dialogues playing out around consumer choices or various matters of lifestyle. — I bought this red jumper, says one girl. — I bought a new skirt, replies the other girl. They are both just talking about themselves, though it might seem as if they made normative statements. And maybe they are, even if not expressly.
The post by N. Sequeira states things more bluntly, commanding what an artist should or shouldn't do to deserve respect or for living a fulfilling life. Here I'm instead tempted to read the statements as declarations of the writer's personal inclinations and habits, to which I could reply, but I do that differently and I'm content with that. However, there is that normative "should" that cannot be missed.
The claim is that if you want to be an artist you must devote all your time to art. In particular, there is no excuse for taking a mind numbing job four days a week that leaves you exhausted and unable to do anything "creative" at all the rest of the time. Now, I hope I have not misrepresented the argument as being normative if in fact it was meant only as a recount of a personal attitude; despite those imposing "shoulds" I'm a little in doubt.
For the record, I make various kinds of art a large part of the time, even during my four years as PhD candidate I found some time to compose music and make drawings. On a personal level, then, I can relate to Sequeira's uncompromising desire for making art, except that for my part I must also include some other activities of general intellectual curiosity, including non-artistic research. That's for my "but I live in Utrecht" answer, to which it might be valuable to add the experiences of a few other artists. Typically, artist careers involve some share of not very creative or art-related work solely for the purpose of making ends meet, as a means to the end of being able to function as an artist at all.
***
Let me go back to that verb, those things an artist _should_ do. In fact, I have some doubts about the assumption of free will, which is the prerequisite for normative statements to be meaningful. (On a second though, perhaps not, but that's a complicated matter for another occasion.)
We don't choose our parents, we don't decide to be born in Chicago in 1986 or in Utrecht in 1977. We have no influence over our biological givens and are randomly thrown into a world, including social settings, which we have little control over. Sapolsky has cogently argued against the assumption of free will, Dennett likewise if you prefer a philosopher's take. However strong the will power and the sense of free choice, our will might turn out to be contingent upon circumstances rather than personal decisions. Of course you can still tell people what they ought to do, but unless it is in accordance with their True Will, as Crowley would call it, they are unlikely to listen.
Then there are the societal aspects of why we can't expect every wannabe artist to devote full time to their art work. Art as a specialised full-time occupation is only possible in a society with a high degree of partition of labour. Some citizens need to take care of fetching the ingredients for food, or build houses and mend bridges, some need to care for the sick and elderly, others need to protect the nation against fnords, and so on. Only when there is a surplus of energy for producing everything that is needed for the society to function can there be specialised artists, and then only as long as they are not forced to work long hours for low wages with things unrelated to art in order to be able to pay their rent and buy their food. Unfortunately, the various tasks that are wanted in a society sometimes compete against each other, such as when the demand that the nation spend two percent of its state budget on defence against the fnords means that there will be less to spend on education, wellfare, the arts, and so on. Under fully developed neoliberal capitalism there of course is no society or a state with a cultural policy, so the artist will have to rely on the market. For those who are concerned with their own artistic freedom, the diktat of common taste and the discipline of self-marketing may turn out to be as strict as the most unfulfilling routine job.
Given the capitalist reality and the need for funding to realise projects, and merely to survive, the critique against artists who are unwilling to live the bohemian suffering artist myth seems unfair.
In fact, many artists who maintain lifelong careers have some form of income on the side, perhaps from art-related activities such as teaching. Well-off artists who can secure their independence by a comfortable heritage are an exception, and obviously they are no more bound to become interesting artists than anyone else. Piketty (in Le capital au XXIe siècle) mentions some nineteenth century authors who married rich to secure their career. With the pyramidal wealth distribution of any unequal society, that is an option only for the few lucky ones.
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There are so many well-meaning guides out there now about how to be a contemporary artist, how to enter the art world and how to survive. And there are even more guides at a more elementary level, explaining how to mix colours, draw contours, and what not. Those who write these guides are themselves artists who might be doing this for an extra source of income, although many are probably genuinely interested in sharing their knowledge with others. In any case, these guides explaining how to behave in the contemporary art world are funny because of the unwitting paradox of their providing instructions and advice to a group of individuals who are, perhaps wrongly, expected to be free-thinking rebels.
You must do this and that to succeed in the art world. Really? And why do we insist on succeeding? Who exactly decides what is high quality art? I certainly wouldn't care for a top ranking on google's search pages, or any other search engine for that matter, as proof of success. Nor do I necessarily recognise prizes as an indication of artistic merit, what they reflect is only the opinion of a jury with their own agenda, a jury who may or may not be qualified. Commercial success is often a counter-indication of quality. Your own satisfaction with what you have produced is important – it matters to you, but does it matter to anyone else?
However, it is quite clear that the basic premise of the art world begins with being accepted into it. That, by itself, is no minor feat. If you apply on an open call for an exhibition slot in a gallery there might be a one chance in thirty of being accepted, even under favourable circumstances. Merely being an outstanding artist might not be enough. But there are suggestions of strategies to apply for increasing the chances of being selected. Some suggest discreet networking, or hopping on one of the current trends with something just sufficiently original not to be blamed for plagiarism. There are practical tips about how to build a cv and set up a web page, probably even what clothes to wear. It hardly needs to be said that certain topics are more popular than others in the contemporary art scene, so hinging your project on one of them will be recommended unless simply taken for granted.
All those recommendations of how to behave, what to believe, and how to express yourself, aren't they fundamentally at odds with that old romantic ideal of the artist as an independent, autonomous creator? Indeed, the contemporary art world has abolished the romantic myth of the artist, but it shouldn't have to matter. Anyone who wants to be an artist on their own premises ought to go ahead and be what they want to. Beuys may have been one of the last such charismatic personalities of wide recognition, I'm sure there still are a few, but the art world and the capitalist society around it doesn't favour the romantic suffering artist who works on his project 25 hours a day and dies poor and forgotten on the street.
Artistic quality, as a presumed precursor to success, depends on an investment in the form of a lot of work. Not because of any work ethic, but because the results arrived at with little effort or a lack of background knowledge tend to be bland or banal, and if you are going to have a long career it also takes a lot of work to renew yourself and explore other avenues instead of safely resorting to one-trick-ponyism. Cattelan is a clown, though, you might object; anyone can scotch a banana to a wall. Quite possible, but even a clown needs a certain skill set. And remember, Cattelan has varied himself, he has also glued a horse to the wall.
Sequeira's uncompromising attitude is forcefully formulated as the answer to the question, posed in a fictitious future talk show, of what is the secret to his success:
> “You have to be willing to lose everything. You need to dedicate every waking moment to the creative process. If you can do that, success is virtually guaranteed. If you can’t do that—if ideas don’t leap into your head like ammunition from the barrel of an automatic machine gun—then success isn’t guaranteed. And the more time you spend doing something else, the less time you’ll have to make art.”
It might come as a disappointment, should it happen after some ten to fifteen years of prodigious art production, that the result is not success in the form of wide recognition and appreciation. Churning out work after work to one's own satisfaction also might not entail the recognition of the art world or general public. Or they might like it while you become increasingly self-critical and can't stand the sight of your own work. All that notwithstanding, I agree that being able to spend as much time as possible on making art is essential for maximising the chances of producing something interesting.
> I’m an Atheist, so the Protestant Work Ethic simply doesn’t exist for me. I don’t believe that working hard will earn me any favor in the eyes of God. [...] If there is no God, then work is meaningless, and everything you do is meaningless, even art. Nihilism is the only intellectually honest position.
I don't see how the absence of meaning follows from the existence of no God, as also disproved in the following:
> Art provides me with meaning, it is all that has ever provided me with meaning or purpose of any kind. It’s how I avoid giving into nihilism, to appreciate the beauty and complexity of the human brain.
Art religion is the profane substitute for deities. Still, it's a religion of sorts, with other sets of superstitions and beliefs than the theological ones.
> I have yet to meet any full-time artists who spend every second creating, as I do, who have a pathological drive to create endlessly, with no other motives or objectives. Many of the local artists resort to weed or alcohol to numb themselves from the mundanity of their positions, most of them complain bitterly on a frequent basis, very few of them are productive. They lack incentive, drive, and most importantly they lack confidence in their own potential.
Without the comparison intended either on a psychological or aesthetic level, here I come to think of Picasso as one who appears to have spent every woken moment painting or drawing something. However, Picasso might not have been a pleasant person to be around, especially if you were a woman. Art history tends to forgive such behaviour when it comes to once-in-a-century talents – forgive, but not forget. And we are right to separate the artist as individual from his œuvre. Let me stress it again, I make no comparison with our fellow geminaut here, apart from the obsession with the artistic activity itself.
As for the complaint about the bitterly complaining artists who numb themselves, I've said it already, we can't do much about being born in Utrecht or in Chicago.
> I cannot respect, on a fundamental level, insecure people without motivation. I respect creativity, I disrespect willful ignorance. Creativity and imagination are vital to the human experience ...
I certainly agree with the last part of creativity and imagination being vital to the human experience. Yet it's funny how creativity has appeared as one of the staple psychological traits on job listings, despite the fact that truly creative people with anarchistic innovative tendencies might actually cause unwanted disruption in the workplace, whereas creativity is apparently something of a taboo word in schools of contemporary art.
> If the conditions for artists are to improve, artists must respect their inherent value and demand adequate compensation for their labor. ... But artists as a whole should absolutely focus on making money and pursuing their careers with borderline manic obsession.
There's an example of those words "should" and "must" again. Focusing on making money and working like a self-employed borderline maniac is not that different from the subsumption of workers in the capitalist system. I suppose uberisation forces even more workers into the bad part of being self-employed without enjoying what remains of the freedom of an artist, circumscribed though it may be. And I don't mean to nit-pick on a valid defence of the precarious artist economy.
> I don’t know how there aren’t more people like me, but that’s what happens when you live under a system which is motivated to crush you. You have to crush it instead, through the power of your own will.
That's the spirit! If you are able to imagine that things could be way different, then why not give it a try and live the change? It might not be easy and it won't not be for everyone. However, by way of tactics, I would not endeavor to crush anything. It is better to create more compelling alternatives, and then people will begin to flock around them.
If my reply should sound overly polemical, please take it as a statement that I live in a different city.
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