Over the last couple of months, I wrote five blog articles but couldn’t bring myself to post any of them. I finally realized last week that I feel very conflicted about my blog. On the one hand, I don’t want to offend anyone, least of all other artists. Being human intrinsically involves suffering, and I don’t want to add to anyone’s suffering in even a miniscule way. I believe that artists are people who have two things our world desperately needs: sensitivity and passion. The last thing they need is criticism, which is a weapon wielded by cowards. It is difficult to make something where nothing existed previously. It is easy to criticize that thing, destroying it with words and convincing others that it is worthless. I respect makers. I do not respect critics. My goal with this blog is not to criticize anyone.
On the other hand, I want this blog to be a faithful record of the thoughts of one particular artist in the world today. If I were to make it free of anything that could potentially be offensive to someone out there, I would end up filling it with platitudes, and it would be a waste of my time as well as yours. I am a passionate person with strong opinions. I am also an artist and am making the art I believe in. If other artists’ work appealed to me, if I thought other artists were making great art, if I thought they were equal to or better than me, there would be no need for me to make art. Being an artist is not easy; it would be more convenient for me to do something else with my life. I am an artist precisely because I don’t like what is out there today. I don’t like the direction in which art has been going. I don’t like the lies that are being told and believed. I am an artist because I believe the world needs the art I am making. And I have a blog because I believe the world needs to hear what I think.
When you read something on my blog, please keep in mind that it is an expression of my perspective. You may disagree with it. It is, after all, an opinion. But it is the opinion of someone who has put a lot of time, effort, and thought into art. It is nothing more, and nothing less, than an honest expression of one artist’s opinion at one moment in time.
The intended readership of this blog is non-artists who are interested in how an artist thinks. If you are an artist, you should not be here. You should be in your studio, working. If you are unable to work, read a novel, go for a walk, or do what we artists do best and wallow in your misery until you are able to work again. Reading the opinions of another artist, or looking at the work of another artist, will not help you. It will inevitably make you feel bad about yourself because you know your own struggles but cannot see those that other artists experience. To maintain your sanity as an artist, you must avoid comparing yourself to other artists, and the only way to avoid comparisons is to ignore the work of other artists completely. The idea that you have to keep up with trends in art and be aware of what everyone else is doing is a lie made up by people who are not making art. You need to focus on making the work only you can make, the work you believe the world needs. You have everything within you to create that work. If you feel the need for instruction or inspiration, look to the artists of the past who are no longer with us, who cannot threaten you or feel threatened by you, who cannot shut you down because of their vulnerabilities as human beings. And think about how you can carry on their tradition using your own voice.
No one should expect an artist to like the work of any other artist, especially the work of an artist who is still alive. One can be inspired by and learn from a dead artist; one can only feel threatened by another living artist. Hollywood has convinced the world that artists work together, hang out in groups, and go to cafes where they engage in heated debates. The reality is much less filmable. Being an artist is a lonely profession. It means spending long hours working away at difficult problems, alone in one’s studio, rarely making contact with the world that exists outside of one’s own mind. It means feeling misunderstood and unappreciated. It means constantly questioning whether what one is making is worth the trouble, whether it is truly meaningful, and whether one is not fooling oneself.
Artists are suspicious of other artists. They are threatened by other artists. They do not like other artists. Any artist who claims otherwise is lying to themselves, lying to you, or both. Since returning to art, I have met only a few artists who were friendly to me. The vast majority of the time, when I meet another artist, what I smell in the air is hostility, resentment, or awkwardness. Now and then, this tension crystallizes into an outright expression of rudeness so outrageous that it should be amusing but instead just hurts. And I don’t feel any affinity for other artists myself. There are only a few artists I would call friends. I believe fiercely in artists and will always defend them as a group, but I have never met another living artist whose work I liked without reservation. The only artist who is making work I care about is Hulya Guler. No one else matters to me. This blog is not about marketing or about appearing slick. It is about truth and honesty, and what you have just read is the honest truth.
If you, a non-artist, happen to meet an artist, please don’t tell them about another living artist whose work you like. I understand that you want them to say they like that artist too, but what the artist will hear is that you don’t like their work or that you think the other artist is doing better work. Depending on how confident they are feeling that day, they will either be hurt or conclude that you have extremely poor judgment. Why should they like the work of another artist? If they did, they would not be making art. If we could rid ourselves of the unreasonable expectation that artists1 must be pleasant, self-effacing, and innocuous; if we could stop expecting artists to behave like salespersons or politicians; if we could recognize that for the sake of their own work artists must value themselves above everyone else, we would at least be dealing with the truth rather than telling ourselves specious lies. An artist may produce work that moves you and makes you feel happy to be alive, but an artist is not a likeable or admirable person. An artist is someone who believes in themselves to an extent that is considered unseemly in our society. Such egotism and self-absorption may not be pretty, but it is necessary. Creating art is so difficult that one can only do it if one is supremely confident in one’s own abilities and worth as an artist. In trying to stuff artists into a gilded cage of social acceptability, our society shuts them down and renders them ineffective. Our world needs artists. Please don’t kill them with unrealistic expectations.
- I am not sure that people expect male artists to be pleasant, self-effacing, and innocuous. But as a female artist, I frequently feel that I am expected to be those things. I will write about this in more detail in a future post. ↩︎