![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Oh, this can't end well
There's a post up this morning at Elizabeth Bear's LJ on the responsibility of the artist to Art that ties in interesting ways to some of the stuff I've been meta-ing about lately, on my own writing and why I write. (Also to the Patricia Wrede discussion, and this post on art vs. humanity, which I agree with 110%.) In fact, Bear's post and her core argument is pretty much a capsule example of Why ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
friendshipper Dropped Out Of Art School. It was to get away from people who thought like that.
... Okay, that's not entirely fair. But when I read that post, my knee-jerk reaction was, "Oh god, it's like I'm a freshman again!" -- and not in a good way. The thing is, I loved studying art; I loved learning the techniques and studying and riffing off famous artists from the past. What I did not love, and what made me realize (among other things) that art-as-a-career was not for me, was the pretentiousness and self-importance of the fine-art world. I realized that I didn't have much in common with ahteeests whose goal as an artist was to discomfit or disgust or sicken their audience under the guise of Making A Statement.
I recognize that everyone is drawn to art (all sorts of art) for many different reasons. I believe that there is a very valid and necessary place in the world for art that discomfits and disturbs the complacent. But I resented (and still do resent), very deeply, the prevailing sense in the pro art world that this is the best and only way to be a "proper" artist. I loathe the pervasive idea that art which is created because it's fun, or created for the sake of pleasing or entertaining people, is less in every way, which goes hand-in-hand with the equally loathsome idea that the artist who creates it is not smart enough or artistic enough or brave enough to do real art.
I hate it because I've spent most of my adult life unlearning that idea and learning not to look down on myself for not being that kind of artist, even though, tangentially, my art is about what's important to me, and sometimes does make statements -- it's just that that's not my primary reason for making it.
The bit from Bear's post that really stood out for me:
Yeah, well, I'm primarily a storyteller, and I'm proud of it. It's not that my work is never about anything -- my original work in particular is very often About Important Stuff. But it's more importantly about people -- telling their stories, getting invested in their lives, caring about them and making my reader care about them as much as I do. There's definitely a valuable place in fiction for making your reader think (and good fiction does), but I resent the implication that I'm not a proper artist if I'm more interested in telling my readers a proper story than poking them in the eye. And I don't think it would have prickled me so hard in the case of this particular blog post if artistic/creative academia wasn't full of this attitude (and if this one particular artist hadn't been brought up for failing to recognize her readers as people in the past, too).
friendshipper Dropped Out Of Art School. It was to get away from people who thought like that.... Okay, that's not entirely fair. But when I read that post, my knee-jerk reaction was, "Oh god, it's like I'm a freshman again!" -- and not in a good way. The thing is, I loved studying art; I loved learning the techniques and studying and riffing off famous artists from the past. What I did not love, and what made me realize (among other things) that art-as-a-career was not for me, was the pretentiousness and self-importance of the fine-art world. I realized that I didn't have much in common with ahteeests whose goal as an artist was to discomfit or disgust or sicken their audience under the guise of Making A Statement.
I recognize that everyone is drawn to art (all sorts of art) for many different reasons. I believe that there is a very valid and necessary place in the world for art that discomfits and disturbs the complacent. But I resented (and still do resent), very deeply, the prevailing sense in the pro art world that this is the best and only way to be a "proper" artist. I loathe the pervasive idea that art which is created because it's fun, or created for the sake of pleasing or entertaining people, is less in every way, which goes hand-in-hand with the equally loathsome idea that the artist who creates it is not smart enough or artistic enough or brave enough to do real art.
I hate it because I've spent most of my adult life unlearning that idea and learning not to look down on myself for not being that kind of artist, even though, tangentially, my art is about what's important to me, and sometimes does make statements -- it's just that that's not my primary reason for making it.
The bit from Bear's post that really stood out for me:
My job as an artist is not to console you or distract you from the things in the world that make you unhappy. That's my job as an entertainer, and often it's in direct conflict with my job as an artist--but conflict is what makes narratives interesting, so that's okay. My job as an artist is not to give you characters and stories you care about and invest in and want to spend time with. That's my job as a storyteller, which supports and informs my job as an artist.
Yeah, well, I'm primarily a storyteller, and I'm proud of it. It's not that my work is never about anything -- my original work in particular is very often About Important Stuff. But it's more importantly about people -- telling their stories, getting invested in their lives, caring about them and making my reader care about them as much as I do. There's definitely a valuable place in fiction for making your reader think (and good fiction does), but I resent the implication that I'm not a proper artist if I'm more interested in telling my readers a proper story than poking them in the eye. And I don't think it would have prickled me so hard in the case of this particular blog post if artistic/creative academia wasn't full of this attitude (and if this one particular artist hadn't been brought up for failing to recognize her readers as people in the past, too).
no subject
I got here via recommendation from
This attitude in academia is much of the reason why, having gotten my bachelor's, I went to work painting murals in people's homes rather than go after a master's degree. I wanted the hell out of that world where the worth of a piece of art was judged according to how much it "challenged the viewer" (which was generally code for being visually unpleasant and/or offensive). I didn't want to live in the ivory tower and be an Art Star in NYC and make things that were meaningless (at best, or hurtful at worst) to anyone outside a certain tiny, overeducated elite.
The notion that art must be antagonistic is really a very modern idea that isn't supported by the art history we all had to learn. I know this, yet I'm right there with you in having to remind myself that there's absolutely no reason to look down on myself for making art that people actually enjoy and want to own.
I don't know much about Elizabeth Bear; never having read her books, my main familiarity is with seeing them in the bookstore and then seeing a little of her in the whole Racefail mess, which I mostly stayed clear of to preserve my own sanity.
However, reading the quote above is enough to make this artist not want to read much else of hers. Storytelling is an art. There's no need to cast it as somehow inferior to the Great Responsibility of the Artist in order to elevate one's own status. Bleh.
And then people in the Art World moan that the Great Unenlightened Public doesn't care about art! Oh noes!
As if it couldn't possibly be their own fault for jabbing the Public with cattle prods whenever the Public approaches.
no subject
hahaha, oh, that's a great way to put it! And, yeah -- the public is not exactly shy about revealing what it likes (see: box office receipts; book sales figures) but those don't count because if it makes a lot of money, it's popular and therefore, it's not ART.
Blah.
If the artistic establishment is becoming irrelevant, it's because it's made itself so, by driving away the very people who would have made it relevant again. I think it's very sad that so many of us had to relearn what makes art fun for us by unlearning what we were taught in school. Throughout history, the majority of art that has survived and endured has been beautiful and often practical -- it supplied a need to both the artists and the people that it was made for. The idea that art is supposed to be shocking and uncomfortable is new(ish), and somewhat antithetical to what art has always been.