I'll leave out the author of these comments. But I couldn't help but comment on it. There is in our society an odd valorization of a romantic ideal of the artist as a madman. We want suffering artists who seem somehow cut off from society. I recall as show on NPR about depression that mentioned the false idea that suffering from clinical depression produced greater art. It didn't, the doctors said. It just made for dysfunctional artists. Anyway, here is the original comment and my response.
If your art is more important to you than anything else and you have a compulsion to tell the truth as you see it no matter whom it offends (which is what constitutes a real artist, imo) then you will be treated the way Dutcher and a few others have been.
And probably deservedly so. There's a word for that: narcissism.
Other things in life ought be more important than art. You know like at minimum family. And if we don't give a darn about who we offend because we value our saying more than the effects of our saying, then we're beyond narcissistic. If I'm walking down the street and see someone funny looking I don't yell out how funny looking they are caring less about their feelings. If someone had a compulsion to do this then we'd probably be prescribing medicine for tourette's or some other illness.
I'm fairly confident you're just engaging in hyperbole here and that you're not like that in the least. However I find it surprising that you characterize the ideal of art in such anti-social (in the strong sense of the term) ways. As if the true artist is the struggling madman.
I know there is a long tradition of considering the madman as artist. The romanticizing of mental illness and so forth to such an extent that to be an artist is to be this romanticized victim of mental illness. For all I know it goes back to ancient times and the mantics as artist where the ecstasy of the artist was madness. Yet this, from modern eyes, treats the artist not as having the gift of the gods but as being cursed by the gods. Art not as the ecstasy of a kind of prophecy but art as the cutting ones self off, ironically, from the world. Art not as the opening of truth but as the closing off to truth.
The grand three plays of Shakespeare interestingly touch upon this theme. In Lear, MacBeth, and Hamlet madness is key to the unfolding of the drama. I've even read papers that argue that dramatic irony (if you believe in it) is actually a kind of valorization of a feigned madness. Since, of course, the actors themselves are not mad. (Well, unless one reads their involvement in the news where typically seems at least a sizable fraction probably do need therapy) Actors are, of necessity, always caught up in a kind of re-presentation of art - a kind of distantiation from the production itself - art as feigned. So we'll turn to the artist themselves - the author, the director, the painter, the photographer. Each in their quest for art not as given by an other artist to them but as the source of art themselves. But is this a kind of feigned art itself? That is to say, is the art they produce something greater than themselves? A being "caught up" in supernatural forces like the ancients thought of the mantics. Or, especially in these de-mythologized days, is it a secondary feigning of the mantic by drawing not on something greater than ones self but oneself itself. The mantic divorced from the gods and brought back to earth as merely suffering from illness.
If art is divorced from prophecy (in this sense) then it does indeed become a kind of feigned madness. A madness not of the heart but rather a heart for madness. That is a desire to be mad when one really isn't.
An odd desire in our times.
While there is evidence that mental illness is higher among artists--including writers--than the general population, I hate the romanticization (is that a word) of the mental illness-art connection. It's the same romanticization that leads people to believe that Nietzsche's madness was caused by his philosophy.
Yes, and art that did not care about others at all, art that was indeed narcissistic, would hardly be art at all, because art is all about communication. It would just be masturbation. On the other hand, what if the artist is only prioritizing? Disapproving family, for your example, might be white-lied to, the artist might be very nice to them, in general, yet she might still sneak out (without letting them find out, as far as possible) to pursue her art, with her fellow artists, and for her admirers (who might of course be fellow pagans). She would not care so much (as she does about her art) about what her family would think if they found her out, and she would risk being found out insofar as such risks were part and parcel of her art. (Cf. sacrificing family for one's country, or one's religion?)
(Second attempt to comment; sorry if the first one pops up too) On the one hand I agree, since art is all about communication. But on the other hand, what if the original comment was just about prioritisation? That is, whilst the artist tries to accommodate the feelings of the family (e.g. by telling white lies), s/he draws the line at not doing the art. Maybe the art is important, e.g. revolutionary art, anti-racist art, patriotic art in the middle of a war, and so forth...
(It did pop up too, sorry for that.)
For the record, while it may be my Heideggarian biases, I'm not sure art is about communication but about showing. What is shown should transcend the artist whereas communication tends to imply that the artist is more dominant.
Yes, I guess I was thinking of art as an activity, although that was suggested by the quote ("telling the truth"). Without some sort of communication (maybe not of information in the information-theoretic sense, and maybe going via the artist from some higher realm, of course) the artistic merit would seem to be a matter of luck, and I would not count that as art (as activity), any more than I would count monkeys happening to type out Hamlet as art.
Well nothing's pure, as I see it. But I tend to see the showing aspect of art as a kind of indicating. Pointing things out, as it were. One could argue that one has to see oneself in order to point. And the skill of the artist is in what is pointed out which always entails an obscuring as much as a showing. Thus a modern artist doing abstract art hides a lot of what is painting but in this hiding shows something hidden in more "realistic" paintings.
I think you're right about that. I'm more inclined to wonder why the artist would bother to show anyone anything (aside from a desire for gold and glory etc.)
Couldn't one make the same claim of the physicist or philosopher?
Yes... I ask myself if I would prefer to hear from one who at least tried to pursue the truth come what may (who saw that as a good) but who made mistakes (being only human), or from one who would drop the pursuit of truth more easily (and with less regret) but who managed to make less mistakes (and so would be showing me better stuff, at least in the sort term), and I find that I would rather engage with the former, and so perhaps in the long run I would also rather consume their products. We, who are more likely to be philosophers or physicists, are more likely to be superficial consumers of their products (whereas for the artists communication is often primary), so perhaps at first we would naturally favour the latter. But cf. your comment #4: "What is shown should transcend the artist whereas communication tends to imply that the artist is more dominant." But if the artist cares a lot about (correspondance) truth, then even on that (questionable) implication what is shown is primary for the artist.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
and Theology
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