On being, or not being, an artist
Sarah Irani, who is an artist and whose ideas on art & other subjects I value and am grateful to have some opportunity to engage, replies in comments below with a question – or rather, better, with a challenge – upon my mentioning that I don't regard myself as an artist. 'What makes someone an artist?' she asks. (My friend Jeff, too, challenged me on this point, in an email.)This is exactly the kind of question I want to be addressing here, for my own if no one else's development of thought. So I'm glad she's put it to me. It's something I'd like to find approaches to from a variety of angles, moreover – and I'm certainly not going to exhaust the matter in a single post in any case. There's a wealth of things to consider. Greater wealth than I can handle, truthfully, since I've had only very limited reading & discussion in what's obviously an issue of widespread & age-long interest within our culture.
Sarah says, 'You make stuff and you draw well.' (Sincere thanks are due to Sarah here for the compliment.) I'm wondering if she's going to amend & develop the question from there; I hope she will. But for the moment, let me take this at face value and think a bit about ways in which we look at making/drawing/&c as sufficient to distinguish someone as an artist. It's true, of course, that one everyday usage of 'artist' simply acknowledges, more or less subjectively, a person's achievement of a greater-than-average degree of skill at something 'creative'. In fact most of us are prone to go further and use 'artist' very loosely, by way of a kind of analogy, for someone who does almost anything especially well. ('Yeah, ya know he's more than a mechanic when it comes to bike repair – he's an artist.') Plainly, Sarah's got too much personal interest in the word to be fairly read in a very loose way on presumption; and I'm aiming to clarify, not confuse, the kinds of meaning she may have in mind. But it's useful to consider the common habits of speech a brief comment like this one from her can derive from or be connected with.
I think it's safe to assume that if Sarah Irani notes habits or skills a person's gained and says, 'You make stuff and you draw well,' there are specifics attached in qualification, whether spoken or unspoken. For Sarah, to say someone draws well most likely isn't going to amount merely to flattery or a gesture of confidence in someone's good intentions, because Sarah's been intensively trained in & become personally invested in the study of drawing in a traditional idiom. We know her judgment about a sketch or a drawing is measured against some array of definite & history-bound criteria. Again, if she says in the same context, 'you make stuff,' we understand what she has in mind isn't a category of kinds of effort that include unthinking assembly of parts 'following the instructions'. 'Making' in the terms she's allowing is (among other things perhaps) a matter of a certain level of intentionality in combination with skill and, more, has its end in contributing in material forms to a world ordered for our living.
But if Paul Bowman does happen to make stuff and/or draw well according to one artist's or many artists' considered, relatively objective criteria, should he also, for that reason alone, be said to be an artist? From here we might find our way into a variety of valuable further questions – and possibly also to a variety of useful yesses and nos in answer to the initial question.
The working problem I want to suggest as a frame for such questions, and the theme I want to try to continue introducing into my own discussions as I can, is the problem of recognizing, acquiring, and inhabiting a discipline – which is a problem that covers a lot of territory: partakes of a lot of other kinds of problems, and certainly isn't just about art in any sense narrow or broad. But it seems to me that bringing this lense over our questions above, questions about whether or not one's making/drawing/&c qualify one to be called an artist, gives us a way to talk about them in terms broader than what have to do with an individual's will & experiences played out – in other words, a way to talk abou them in social & cultural terms – and at the same time gives us a way to see the individual's will & experiences, in respect to making/drawing/&c, as meaningful for the sake of something more than any apparent or real value, understood as contribution to social or cultural life, things he or she makes might have.
Anyway – coming down from the exuberant generalizing —
The fact that comes most immediately to my mind, in answer to a challenge like Sarah's or Jeff's, is the fact that I don't make a pursuit of producing art works, either as a way to make my living or as something I'd do to make a living if I could. Nor (at present, anyway) am I ever really more than faintly concerned, beyond the most utilitarian & non-subjective reckoning, with the value that any things I may make (or even draw) might have for adding shape to a world of meanings & meaning. So there are simple, concrete senses in which I can't call myself an artist – that is, with respect to work – any more than a tax accountant or a used car salesman or a carpet-layer can. On the other hand, I do have a long-standing desire to study architecture and to enter, in some fashion, that profession. And in some ways (adding confusion here, maybe) this does begin for me in drawing, which has always been part of my life. Moreover, I think of my work now, and various of my pursuits apart from work, as at least a leading-up-to gaining architecture as a discipline for life. That being so, there's some discussion warranted about whether or in what sense architecture is art, and whether by aiming for it I'm in process of becoming an artist somehow.
We'll see to what degree I'll be able to take these questions up here, over time.
posted by paul bowman @ 2:05 PM
6 Comments:
What we might have here is a difference between vocation and profession. I am no longer being supported by art-making. I do not make a living at it. I took some time off to go to school and my husband supports the home. Does that make me not an artist?
Of course not. Sculpture is my vocation. I would even call myself a draftsman, as in one who draws, even though I have never contributed to my economic living by selling drawings. (Though I HAVE sold drawings.)
Often people have told me that I am a professional artist because I make money as an artist. I think that reflects our utter saturation in capitalism. Is it possible to contribute aesthetically to culture and not make any money?
This is a slippery subject indeed. After how much training and how much accomplishment does one call himself an artist? Are artists born or are they made? At what point do we cease being a student of art and become an artist, keeping in mind that the learning never stops.
Thank you for the flattering remarks regarding my place as an artist to comment on who is and who isn't one.
I'd like to see where this discussion goes.
(AKA Darrell Reimer):
I think I share your hesitancy to call myself an "artist" (would much rather hear someone else refer to me thusly, the better for me to self-effacingly beg to differ). Unfortunately a big part of marketing artistry in the West is the marketing of the artist's ego. I don't want to start referring to the pre-Renaissance period as "the good old days", but in the good old days before the Renaissance, steps were taken to remove ego from the end result. Unfortunately it produced a broad tide of dreary sameness. So we're back to "Whither the artist?"
I wonder if at least the most baldly egoistic impulses aren't somewhat subsumed when artistry is considered an act of worship?
Even in the early Renaissance, the really good artists were high class. Giotto and Cimabue were mentioned by Dante in his Divine Comedy. Petrach wrote poetry about a painting by Simone Martini while they were both at the papal court in Avignon. Remember that these artists from the good ole days were still men. And men are inclined to think a little too well of themselves.
It is true, however, that now the ego is for sale. Just look at Andy Warhol!
Making art soli deo gloria won't get your work noticed, sad to say. it is a delicate game to play- making it as an artist today. Sadly, art schools are setting young artists up to fail.
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Darrell & Sarah, I think I actually want to be careful to avoid thinking of the artist mainly in market terms. I provided the cue for following that line of thought, of course, in the last paragraph there — but I only meant in that bit to bring the question to the level of the pragmatic, in view of my own situation as things stand at present. Certainly it seems that someone might be an artist, at least in several perfectly good senses of the word, and doing important work — and yet never find opportunity to establish one's stuff in the marketplace. Or one might intentionally get a living from something besides one's art, in order not to have to subject one's stuff to the market. — And so on.
But considering the relative prominence of the artistic ego at various points in history of Western art, or in various cultures' distinguishable art traditions, and what the variations mean for artists' work & its reception: there are long lines of inquiry that might be followed in this direction. Don't know what all I can get into, but it excites me to think of the kind of fruit discussions on these lines might have.
I got into Maritain's Creative Intuition in Art & Poetry a bit, late in college — unprepared to understand much of it — and have been wanting to return to it for some time. (Never finished it, I'm ashamed to say.) There's relevant material there, as I recall. I'm eager now to pursue this, at least a little. But it will probably have to wait a while, no matter how eager I am.
Thanks for thoughtful contributions here!
(AKA Darrell):
I wonder if what we're looking for isn't some sense of calling or commission. When I was in my 20s, I never hesitated to introduce myself as a writer. I had one conversation with a gent some 20 years older than I, who confessed he wasn't altogether sure just how this claim impressed him: was I the real deal, or just a ballsy faker? I told him anyone can be a writer, but that I wouldn't call myself an author until I was published - receiving "commission", in other words.
I'm also thinking of conversations I had with a high school friend, back in the day. He was mechanically gifted, and I used to really enjoy hanging out in his family's garage, watching him take apart engines. He figured I was there to learn, and he went to great lengths explaining the function of this and that, the importance of applying appropriate torque to various bolts, etc. In one ear, out the other. I finally told him I was there purely for the visual thrill of watching this stuff get dissassembled, and reassembled. The symmetry, the purposeful thought to the design - "It's art!" I said. He looked at me as if I had a screw loose (ha!), shook his head and went about his work. But I do think engines are beautiful to look at, and have often thought a Victorian ink-on-paper approach to a four-stroke-engine would be a nifty thing to frame.
I babble. Would like to read your thoughts on Maritain.
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