Society strives for, thrives on,
and is yet deprived of a certain authenticity in the fine arts. Nowadays more than ever do we, as
creativity-seeking, criticism-spitting human beings, long to see an artist—a
fine artist—step up and prove that he is true to himself in the creation of his
work. How can such an artist prove
himself, though, when our society has set such unreachable prerequisites that
an aspiring artist must attain, brandish and expose to the world before he may
be dubbed a true artist? There is a list
(one that varies in what it comprises depending on who you ask) of requirements
for someone to become a successful artist.
Even when following the to-do list, though, countless contestants either
get booted out of the competition because they don’t exceed the presentation of
a select few or they simply drop out due to sheer frustration toward the art
world and its ambiguity.
Not
only is there a great ambiguity in the field of fine art, but there is also the
factor of where we are in time. It is
the twenty-first century. So much art
has come and gone through the ages and because of our records of such art, we
know what has already been accomplished.
We know the true artists of history.
From the great Michelangelo Caravaggio and his captivating David with the Head of Goliath in the
early 1600s, to the eventually blind Claude Monet with his subtly beautiful Water Lilies in 1906, to the fantastic
(and my all-time favorite) Salvador Dali with his enthralling Temptation of St. Anthony in 1946, the
fame has been claimed and rightly so.
Our world, however, cannot function properly without art, so the
aspiring artists scattered across the globe have reason for hope. It’s all a matter of coming up with something
that pushes the definition of art. It’s
a matter of the artist finding something deep within himself that differs from
others’ views and to expose that inner self to the world, because the world
needs art to give meaning to our surroundings.
Andrew Potter, in his book The
Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves, speaks of Western
culture and its obsession with authenticity as of late and how that obsession
came to life:
We
have followed the turn in Western culture that began with an
initial, visceral
reaction against the three pillars of the modern world: spiritual
disenchantment, political liberalism, and the growth of the market
economy. As we traced it through the
thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, this reaction gave rise to the ideal of
authenticity, which culminated in a celebration of spontaneity, emotional
transparency, and a fixation on the creative powers of the individual to
provide meaning in a world that otherwise offers none (Potter 78).
Potter distinguishes between two
types of authenticity in the art world; there is authenticity-as-provenance and
authenticity-as-artistic-expression (79).
Although society cringes at mock-artists (those who can recreate a work
of art without any differences detectable to the naked eye), the real concern,
surprisingly, is the “discrepancy between what the artist seems to be doing and
what he or she is actually up to. That
is, we look at a work and wonder whether the work is a true expression of the
artist’s self, her vision, her ideals, or perhaps her community, culture, or ‘scene’” (Potter 78). Society wants to know that what an artist
expresses through his art is what he feels inside.
So
one may think it would be pretty easy for an aspiring artist who believes in
himself and what he aims to express to become a world-renowned legend, some day
destined to sit on a cloud with da Vinci, Picasso, et cetera. The difficulty, though, lies with producing
something new, novelty. We want nouveau
art, but not art nouveau because that’s been done. Sure, we love to see a true artist who
creates mainly for himself, but that matters not one bit if his stuff looks
exactly like everything else being pushed in our faces by commercialized
artists. This is where the to-do list
comes into play, and Charles Pearson has laid out that list for us in six
steps. An aspiring artist must have an
artistic style and he must choose a related medium that makes delving into the
style more accessible. He must then
practice the medium, which includes studying other successful artists in that
medium. After essentially “perfecting”
the first combination, he must choose an audience that would most likely
appreciate his work. Choosing the audience
is not enough on its own, though; the artist needs exposure. He must find ways to push his art in view of
his intended audience as much as possible without shoving it down unwilling
throats. After (supposedly) appealing to
his intended audience, the artist must find a way to sell his art. Marketing is key if someone intends to make a
living off of his art. The trickiest
part is the final step, though. An
artist is not protected from the shifting market. What people like—trends—change and transform
far too quickly for an artist to keep up with it all, but if he decides to stand
stagnant as a one hit wonder, he risks boring his clients and losing publicity,
thus losing popularity, thus losing his livelihood (Pearson).
I’ve
asked myself in the past, “How, in our currently kitsch-infatuated world, could
someone stand out as an up-and-coming promising, authentic artist?” First, there needs to be an understanding
that not everyone who produces this recent kitschy form of art is a
sell-out. Many of the artists who create
such work thoroughly enjoy it and believe that they are expressing themselves
through it. The problem is that so many
people have jumped on the bandwagon that in order to prove himself to be great,
an aspiring artist must show that he is multi-faceted. This, in no way, means that he must copy an
artist and show that he can produce what the public loves along with what he
loves. Nominal authenticity—“defined
simply as the correct identification of origins, authorship, or provenance of
an object” (Dutton around pg. 2651)—still counts for something, and
society doesn’t like a copycat, no matter how talented he is. According to Dennis Dutton:
Establishing
nominal authenticity serves purposes more important than maintaining the market
value of an art object: it enables us to understand the practice and history of
art as an intelligible history of the expression of values, beliefs, and ideas,
both for artists and their audiences – and herein lies its link to expressive
authenticity (Dutton 269 or2 270).
So if an artist can replicate a
Vermeer to perfection, that shows craftsmanship but explains nothing of his own
beliefs and values. And those beliefs
and values are really what society longs to catch, hold onto and preserve for
as long as possible. The task is for an
aspiring artist to both showcase his craftsmanship as well as expose his deeper
self through visual expression. If at
all possible, the artist should make himself recognizable in some form or
fashion. Hans Abbing states that
authentic artists often times do possess that elusive trait of individuality:
A work of art and
its maker are said to be authentic. In a
formal sense, they are authentic if the artist in question is the only one who
could have made the particular work of art.
A unique fingerprint of the artist somehow manages to creep into the
work of art, its style, the signature or some other quality. In expressionist works of art the personal
touch is very visible; people ‘recognize’ the artist in the work of art. In other works of art this quality seems more
hidden; in fact, so much so that sometimes only the artist’s signature can be
verified as genuine (Abbing 25).
What Abbing is saying, then, is
that it is sort of up to the artist, as an individual, to decide whether or not
he wants to make a mark on his work that is more prominent than a scribble that
represents his name. An artist must
decide how he wants the world to perceive his art versus how he wants the world
to perceive him.
Knowing
that authenticity is entirely possible and that people appreciate it, aspiring
artists must also know that although “the arts is all very exciting stuff, you
have to earn a living as well,” states Brennan in “Selling Art Without Selling
Out” in the Irish Times. So many people believe that artists create
art merely for themselves or as gifts for others, but those many people are
entirely wrong. Although artists get
great joy out of the completion of a wonderful piece, they—just like everyone
else on Earth—require money in order to function in society. Sadly enough, in order to make money,
sometimes an artist must push his authenticity aside and create for the masses
what they desire in general. Abbing
brings up the point that “art is what people call art” but that “contradicting
views exist on what art is, and this does not help in the construction of a timeless
definition of art” (Abbing 19). So an
artist who wants to make a living off of his art must at least slightly bend to
please the crowd. The issue is that one
can never be entirely sure of what the crowd wants. An artist kind of has to give in and create
pieces that he may not necessarily like or enjoy creating because he has to
find a way to a) make money and b) broaden his audience so that he gains the
popularity that he needs in order to survive as an artist.
This,
however, is where the vicious downward spiral begins. An artist creates art because it’s what he
loves to do—it’s his passion. People
want to pursue careers that they will enjoy, so naturally an artist wants to
make money off of his art because not only does he get the monetary
compensation for his hard work, but he also receives gratitude from those who
can’t produce the magnificence that he can.
To stay in business, though, he must please a certain amount of clients
and that almost always means having to produce work that doesn’t really speak
for who the artist is. He has to do it,
though, so he can make the money to buy supplies for the work he holds so dear
to his heart. Eventually, however, he
becomes tired of making pieces that everyone enjoys except for him, and his
motivation to truly create begins to
diminish. In the end, it’s very possible
and today, even plausible, that he ends up solely producing people pleaser
pieces and abandons where his heart used to be.
This sort of series of events can lead to not only sadness, but to a
complete contempt for the art world, when that world used to be such a
beautiful, open place. The more that
artists force themselves into this sort of slavery that requires them to
produce copies of what already exists, the less likely we are to find that
authentic artists who speaks to us by speaking for himself. The most recent gem in the world of the arts is
masked street artist, Banksy, who happens to feel just as strongly about this
issue as I do. He is a brilliant British
artist who masks himself so that he doesn’t undermine his art by showing the
world the face of the creator. He
believes in the truth that should be
in art. He believes in the meaning of
art and the expression through it, but he understands that art has lately lost
its meaning in so many cases. “I used to
encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don’t do that so much any more”
(Banksy 2010). His recent lack of faith
in people is proof that even the artists notice the loss of originality, the
abandonment of deeper meaning in the arts.
It
turns out that the problem isn’t whether or not an artist is capable of exuding
authenticity today—it is difficult due to the fact that so much has already
been done—but rather the problem is whether or not the world will let artists
BE ARTISTS. There are so many sources,
especially on the internet, that prove that true artists most definitely still
exist today and that they are able to make a living for themselves off of what
they love to do, but they are the lucky ones.
For the most part, it’s a sad bunch of kids whose dreams are sure to die
sooner rather than later because they understand that for most of the
candidates, there isn’t a chance in Hell that they will make it big as an
artist. The world is too
constricting. The world doesn’t know
what it’s losing.
If
the artists could see the snake that the world has turned itself into and if
they could see how it (the world) is tightly squeezing the life out of all of
them, they could look around and maybe try to find some poppies to feed to this
soul-destroying serpent to get it to relax and let the artists do their
thing. The aspiring artists so
desperately need to be able to perform even the smallest deeds that show
originality and authenticity, and they need to pat themselves on the back every
time they’re able to accomplish such a thing because of how rare that is
nowadays. As Ralph Waldo Emerson
suggested, I too implore the artists of today: “Adhere to your own act, and
congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant, and
broken the monotony of a decorous age”.
The
world needs to let artists have some room to breathe, because their air has
been so clouded by outside, extraneous sources that they’ve lost sight of what
art is supposed to be and what it’s supposed to do. It needs its meaning back.
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