My own sense is that if you're conscious of it, it's not sincere. I also share the late Robert Palmer's view that if you think you're doing something important, you should dress up for it.
I agree with you about dressing up, Frank. This article, however, I found to be incredibly wrong-headed. Here is the reply I posted over there:
My, what a welter of half-baked opinions! LOL To be blunt, this is the sort of thinking I never hear coming from artists themselves. You're "defending" what doesn't need to be defended. Most artists of my acquaintance would read this, laugh, and go back to doing their art. What I get out of this is an apparent vast ignorance of the creative process itself.
The bit about dancers is completely wrong-headed, because it seems to be an opinion formed by watching dancers added to rock shows, where it's true that dancing is often an add-on, rather than on intrinsic dance itself, ranging from classical ballet to Bill T. Jones or Merce Cunningham. You've stated your own contradictory feelings here; let me add to your contradictions by pointing out that dance isn't an isolate art and never has been. You want it go back to being something it never was. Having myself played live music (as a composer and improvising musician) for dance concerts (not to mention for silent films), your opinions about how dancers ought to be used would probably be laughed at by most dancers.
Yet there is a kernel of sanity amidst this welter of half-baked notion. That kernel is about respecting art AS art, for its own sake, not for what it can do for your commercially-driven show experience.
People do expect a lot when ticket prices are so high these days. The root of those practices you're abhoring is based in commerce, not in "pure" art. One reason that popular music shows are big showy productions (and again, they always have been), is because the music industry is indeed dominated by commerce (and has been). Rock and roll puts on a show that is more than just about the music, sometimes, for two reasons: 1. gotta make money doing it; and 2. sometimes the music IS weak, without a show. No musician would put Kiss concert on the same level as a Mozart concert; they're too entirely different worlds.
Except that there's a fallacy here, too. The fallacy is the "purity" of art—there never has been any such thing. Artists have always needed to make a living. I can tell you from my own experience as an artist that in this world, you need to work to pay rent. If you work a 40 hour week, you often come home too tired to actually DO your art. If you work at your "pure" art in obscurity, with no independent source of non-work income, you starve or become homeless. And then where do you do your art?
No, artists like everyone else have always had to earn their living. What you neglect to point out here is HOW. At least artists who are "prostituting" their art are making their living FROM their art, not from working at Wal-Mart, and coming home too tired to make their art. Artists who DO make their living from their creativity are happy in that they ARE making their living from their creativity and talent, and not pumping gas.
You've obviously never had to work as a commercial artist OR as a fine artist. No artist shares your opinions about "pure" art, beyond fantasy and wishful thinking. All of us know better.
You're just recycling the Romantic myth of the "pure," unpaid, starving solitary hero-artist, working alone in obscurity. That's a nicely Romantic myth that was never really true. It was promoted by the Romantic artists who wanted to be seen as individualistic Hero-Artists, but in fact it was only ever a myth. No artist actually works that way: and once again this is a myth that only non-artists believe.
As an artist, poet, and composer, I've spent most of my life around other creative individuals, and without exception they all need community, if only to gather together to talk with each other about what they're trying to do. Art doesn't thrive in solitary vacuums; it needs feedback. Most artists who follow the myth you're supporting go off by themselves and are never heard from again, and if they are, their art has often become so disconnected from everything that it's either incomprehensible or pointless. Solitary artists, despite the myth, often end up in artistic dead ends. They are only occasionally innovative geniuses; they're usually cranks.
As for sincerity: Well, let's see. What you've argued for here makes any taint of money or commercialism be defined as de facto insincere. Once again, it's a false dichotomy, and completely unreal. There are indeed artists who have not achieved fame and fortune who keep doing it because they are dedicated to it—but not because they are above the fray, rather because its' like breathing, you make art or you're dead. You ascribe a wishful-thinking motivation about purity to such artists who labor in relative obscurity (I am one of these, who matches your profile while mocking it) when in truth we'd all like to be well-off enough from our art-making to drop the day job and just keep making art. Once again, your opinions are not of the real world.
You're correct in that sincerity, whatever that is, will not surface in art if it is self-conscious. But you're incorrect in believing that sincerity is a function that is automatically destroyed by any contact with commerce. Except you do allow for minimal contact, purely on grounds of encouragement. How incredibly condescending you are to working artists! Do you imagine that Charles Dickens was an insincere writer because he was paid to publish his novels in newspaper installments? Or Henry James? By your criteria, Emily Dickinson was a sincere writer, but Walt Whitman was not. Self-promotion by your criteria is inherently insincere.
But that's a crock. Even Emily Dickinson had her small community of readers. Dickens sincerely wanted to depict the hard life of the lower classes in Victorian England, as a way of improving their lot (and he succeeded).
You are recycling the Modernist myth—which is a late Romantic myth, founded upon the hero-artist myth—of "art for art's sake." That's all well and good. But not even the High Modernists practiced the myth they promoted. They expected to get paid for their artistic work. The Bauhaus school was not a charity institution.
Maybe you need to start making art, rather than just opinion about it. Then maybe you would appreciate the dilemmas of the creative process, and what artists must sacrifice to be able make their art, and perhaps come to realize just how unreal your myth of artistic "purity" really is.
Art, I have great difficulty with the idea of sincerity in art, since I really don't know what it's supposed to mean. However, the last thing I want to do is talk with other writers about what we're trying to do. Community, yes - observing, listening, talking, living. But precisely not to/with other writers. That's what their books are for.
Yes, Lee, but you're still engaged with other writers, via their writings. You're not writing in a pure vacuum. Even if you don't want to engage in roundtables or seminars or workshops, or anything like that, you're still part of the community of writers because you're reading them.
And you're here, talking to us about writing, and connecting via blogs with other writers, in discussions about writing. So you're part of something confocal, not off in a "pure" vacuum ignoring the rest of humanity.
I find it interesting, Frank, that Chris would choose to refuse to respond to what I wrote. He did openly ask for opinions on his admittedly extremist views on the matter.
I find that very telling. And I said so, over there.
I agree with you about dressing up, Frank. This article, however, I found to be incredibly wrong-headed. Here is the reply I posted over there:
ReplyDeleteMy, what a welter of half-baked opinions! LOL To be blunt, this is the sort of thinking I never hear coming from artists themselves. You're "defending" what doesn't need to be defended. Most artists of my acquaintance would read this, laugh, and go back to doing their art. What I get out of this is an apparent vast ignorance of the creative process itself.
The bit about dancers is completely wrong-headed, because it seems to be an opinion formed by watching dancers added to rock shows, where it's true that dancing is often an add-on, rather than on intrinsic dance itself, ranging from classical ballet to Bill T. Jones or Merce Cunningham. You've stated your own contradictory feelings here; let me add to your contradictions by pointing out that dance isn't an isolate art and never has been. You want it go back to being something it never was. Having myself played live music (as a composer and improvising musician) for dance concerts (not to mention for silent films), your opinions about how dancers ought to be used would probably be laughed at by most dancers.
Yet there is a kernel of sanity amidst this welter of half-baked notion. That kernel is about respecting art AS art, for its own sake, not for what it can do for your commercially-driven show experience.
People do expect a lot when ticket prices are so high these days. The root of those practices you're abhoring is based in commerce, not in "pure" art. One reason that popular music shows are big showy productions (and again, they always have been), is because the music industry is indeed dominated by commerce (and has been). Rock and roll puts on a show that is more than just about the music, sometimes, for two reasons: 1. gotta make money doing it; and 2. sometimes the music IS weak, without a show. No musician would put Kiss concert on the same level as a Mozart concert; they're too entirely different worlds.
Except that there's a fallacy here, too. The fallacy is the "purity" of art—there never has been any such thing. Artists have always needed to make a living. I can tell you from my own experience as an artist that in this world, you need to work to pay rent. If you work a 40 hour week, you often come home too tired to actually DO your art. If you work at your "pure" art in obscurity, with no independent source of non-work income, you starve or become homeless. And then where do you do your art?
No, artists like everyone else have always had to earn their living. What you neglect to point out here is HOW. At least artists who are "prostituting" their art are making their living FROM their art, not from working at Wal-Mart, and coming home too tired to make their art. Artists who DO make their living from their creativity are happy in that they ARE making their living from their creativity and talent, and not pumping gas.
You've obviously never had to work as a commercial artist OR as a fine artist. No artist shares your opinions about "pure" art, beyond fantasy and wishful thinking. All of us know better.
You're just recycling the Romantic myth of the "pure," unpaid, starving solitary hero-artist, working alone in obscurity. That's a nicely Romantic myth that was never really true. It was promoted by the Romantic artists who wanted to be seen as individualistic Hero-Artists, but in fact it was only ever a myth. No artist actually works that way: and once again this is a myth that only non-artists believe.
(continued)
(had to break for length)
ReplyDeleteAs an artist, poet, and composer, I've spent most of my life around other creative individuals, and without exception they all need community, if only to gather together to talk with each other about what they're trying to do. Art doesn't thrive in solitary vacuums; it needs feedback. Most artists who follow the myth you're supporting go off by themselves and are never heard from again, and if they are, their art has often become so disconnected from everything that it's either incomprehensible or pointless. Solitary artists, despite the myth, often end up in artistic dead ends. They are only occasionally innovative geniuses; they're usually cranks.
As for sincerity: Well, let's see. What you've argued for here makes any taint of money or commercialism be defined as de facto insincere. Once again, it's a false dichotomy, and completely unreal. There are indeed artists who have not achieved fame and fortune who keep doing it because they are dedicated to it—but not because they are above the fray, rather because its' like breathing, you make art or you're dead. You ascribe a wishful-thinking motivation about purity to such artists who labor in relative obscurity (I am one of these, who matches your profile while mocking it) when in truth we'd all like to be well-off enough from our art-making to drop the day job and just keep making art. Once again, your opinions are not of the real world.
You're correct in that sincerity, whatever that is, will not surface in art if it is self-conscious. But you're incorrect in believing that sincerity is a function that is automatically destroyed by any contact with commerce. Except you do allow for minimal contact, purely on grounds of encouragement. How incredibly condescending you are to working artists! Do you imagine that Charles Dickens was an insincere writer because he was paid to publish his novels in newspaper installments? Or Henry James? By your criteria, Emily Dickinson was a sincere writer, but Walt Whitman was not. Self-promotion by your criteria is inherently insincere.
But that's a crock. Even Emily Dickinson had her small community of readers. Dickens sincerely wanted to depict the hard life of the lower classes in Victorian England, as a way of improving their lot (and he succeeded).
You are recycling the Modernist myth—which is a late Romantic myth, founded upon the hero-artist myth—of "art for art's sake." That's all well and good. But not even the High Modernists practiced the myth they promoted. They expected to get paid for their artistic work. The Bauhaus school was not a charity institution.
Maybe you need to start making art, rather than just opinion about it. Then maybe you would appreciate the dilemmas of the creative process, and what artists must sacrifice to be able make their art, and perhaps come to realize just how unreal your myth of artistic "purity" really is.
Two respected poets on the virtues of impurity:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/21915
Art, I have great difficulty with the idea of sincerity in art, since I really don't know what it's supposed to mean. However, the last thing I want to do is talk with other writers about what we're trying to do. Community, yes - observing, listening, talking, living. But precisely not to/with other writers. That's what their books are for.
ReplyDeleteYes, Lee, but you're still engaged with other writers, via their writings. You're not writing in a pure vacuum. Even if you don't want to engage in roundtables or seminars or workshops, or anything like that, you're still part of the community of writers because you're reading them.
ReplyDeleteAnd you're here, talking to us about writing, and connecting via blogs with other writers, in discussions about writing. So you're part of something confocal, not off in a "pure" vacuum ignoring the rest of humanity.
I love it when some of the smartest and most engaged artists I know get to discussing things. I have to run out, but will weigh in later.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting, Frank, that Chris would choose to refuse to respond to what I wrote. He did openly ask for opinions on his admittedly extremist views on the matter.
ReplyDeleteI find that very telling. And I said so, over there.