It is absurd and insulting to assume artists are assisted by despair or hunger in a way that, say, plumbers are not.
From a piece in the Guardian...
I have been trying to write for at least a quarter of a century, and I can say very firmly that in my experience, suffering is largely of no bloody use to anyone, and definitely not a prerequisite for creation. If an artist has managed to take something appalling and make it into art, that's because the artist is an artist, not because something appalling is naturally art.
Just try kicking your bare foot really hard against the nearest wall. In your own time – I can wait … And now tell me how creative you feel. Just bloody sore and mind-fillingly distracting, isn't it?
3 comments:
Love it--wonderfully phrased, the bit about how the appalling becomes art because of the artist, not because of its appallingness. Great post!
I agree with the premise of the piece. To suffer IN ORDER to create art is absurd. But one can't fail to note that many of our greatest artists did indeed suffer. It seems a backlash of the fairer-temperament artists who no not suffer.
The fact remains that suffering can imbue art with a depth and resonance that may be universal to all who view/read/experience it. But this has to be done, ultimately, with the artist avoiding the USE of suffering as the subject.
Great beauty has been created through tremendous suffering, and what is left is a beauty that speaks deeper than something that does not tap into the human condition.
What many don't stop to realize is that many of the greats had no choice but to suffer--they were ill. Creating beauty out of that is what remains a triumph of the human spirit. In my opinion :)
I reblogged your painting in one of my posts. Hope you don't mind.
www.trevorbarton.co.uk/blog
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