A Challenge to Artists
May 3rd, 2006Why is it so difficult to be an artist? CB responded:
How can any one living in the developed world, with enough money & free time to waste it dicking around with a website and on [an art discussion group], in anyway consider their life or even their work “hard”? Living in Iraq would be hard, farming in Sudan would be hard, having a degenerative painful disease would be hard. But for artists to pretend to be in the same boat is just self-involved nonsense. Certainly it was true prior to the 1900’s ( when no sales amounted to starvation), or for those who had to face down a Stalin or a Hitler or a Mao, but now? just suck it up and quit yer whining….
Here is what CB makes me ask myself:
- Do I wake up before sunrise to put my best into my art while most people are still sleeping?
- Do I paint as though my very existence depended on it?
- And if not, why not?
CB does not aim at popularity with his writing style. But I think his advice — “just suck it up and quit yer whining” — is valuable. The reason is that I think “the art world”, as we know it, is about to fall apart. There are going to be tremendous opportunities for artists in the near future, but it will take some guts to make the most of them.
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Related: Why is it so difficult to be an artist?
May 3rd, 2006 at 6:29 pm
A silly comment. Human nature adapts to the level of stress in an given environment by establishing a new set point. A mother is upset if her child breaks an arms and the CEO of a company is upset if her company gets bankrupt.
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Wait… You think the art world is about to fall apart? Talk about burying your lead!
May 4th, 2006 at 6:08 am
It’s not a challenge, it’s an expectation. You are (I assume) an adult; you should be able to take responsibility for your decisions without needing to portray yourself as a martyr or victim. I checked out the full comment on the blog and noted you seemed to think ita badge of honor to submit to suffering arising before dawn to do art. If your lover woke you up for a cuddle in the pre-dawn hours, would you walk around complaining the same way? OTOH, if your cat woke you up coughing up hairballs at that hour, well, you might have some justification. Where do you place your art production on that scale?
Cheers;
CB
(cross-posted from Google art discussion group
May 4th, 2006 at 6:13 am
CB, I take inspiration where I can find it. Call your comment a challenge or expectation, it’s fine with me. I was up early today and started drawing. I’m challenging, or expecting, myself to continue. I used to do this often, don’t know how I lost the good habit. The early hours are valuable, I find — almost like time gained. Staying up late seems like time lost, at least with the schedule I need to keep.
As you point out, in a relative sense most of our lives are easy. But that does not mean it is easy to accomplish any goal that we set for ourselves. In fact, an easy life can make it more difficult to reach some goals — because it becomes so easy to do something different.
Being an artist is difficult for reasons that go beyond the emotional ones you are finding or imagining in the blog. The reason I find your challenge/expectation useful is that you make me realize that to accomplish difficult goals, I need to push harder. I knew that anyway, of course, but it is always good to hear it again.
May 4th, 2006 at 6:35 am
Ossi, without disputing your point about adapting stress levels, I think you are missing what I see in CB’s challenge/expectation. CB is saying that what seems difficult to artists is not really so difficult in an absolute sense. If we remember that we in modern civilization are adapted to a low stress level (compared to the situations CB describes), it seems to me we can intentionally set ourselves harder goals, raise the level of difficulty and challenge, beyond what seems the default for our comfortable modern lives.
You can fairly disagree with CB in many respects. Rather than disagreeing, I am taking what I find useful.