I think over the past year, I have thought that making art is a struggle. That is was purely a struggle and that it offers very little to enjoy than overcoming this ‘struggle’. I think after a year, this is most likely wrong. To ‘struggle’ in trying something new or venturing into new territory can just be your comfort zone healthily extending. But the idea that art must be a struggle in order for it to bring something valuable out of yourself feels outdated and aligns more with the spectacles of artists over centuries.
Take for instance, the romanticised artist; a reclusive hermit reduced purely to their making who wears the silhouette of the starving artist like a chip on their shoulder, whispering in their ear, disguised as both angel and devil that art is sacred. On the other end of the spectrum, but still haunted by this figure of the starving artist, stands the hyper-public artist; using social platforms as a means of promoting their work under clickbait captions of ‘1/3 artist, 2/3 entrepreneur’ and ‘3 sneaky ways to sell your art online’, art primarily becomes a means to an end which under the current economic system, is no surprise. But still, I find it difficult to think have we been made to detach so far from what we produce that even art is a means to an end? Which brings about another outdated idea; one that art is considered something more noble and sacred than any other profession, medium or activity that it shouldn’t fall into this ‘entrepreneur grindset.’
This separation between art and general society is explored in regards to the outdated idea that ‘everyone is an artist at heart’ by Dan Fox in his article ‘The Creative Act’ :
‘… it’s that old Joseph Beuys canard, superficially well-intentioned but which comes off as aristocratic condescension rather than democratic levelling, because it doesn’t value being, say, a mechanic, or a nurse, for what they are, but for being disguised forms of artistry.’
Not everybody wants to be an artist. These extremes of the romanticised hermit vs. hyper-public artist have now lead, however, to what I deem as a self-victimisation of the artist. Struggle is apparent with anything in life; it could be financial, romantic, familial or it could simply be struggling to wash the dishes after leaving them ‘to soak’ for 3 days. However, it seems to be specifically romanticised within art from pioneers of the art world dealing with mental illness. Film and media is no stranger to this romanticisation but the art world is a close friend too; the narrative of Van Gogh’s work is charged by the context of his mental illness, specifically the one of him losing his ear. ‘Such a spectacle that only an artist could do it’, it casts later artists into a similar light, assuming the need for spectacular difficulty in order to charge their work forward, perpetuating the narrative that art making must come from struggle in order for it to have value.
These narratives are difficult to ignore as they offer a form of navigation in an industry that for the most part, is very uncertain. Contradictory narratives are also no stranger to the art world. At uni, in a final year crit, I was asked what the institutional critique of my work was. They were charcoal drawings riding off, like most, a tunnel-visioned excitement of Dune: Part One in 2021. At the time I wanted to go into set design in film or TV and I also didn’t know what institutional critique was but after having it explained to me by the tutor I was only more confused; the idea that a work you are trying to get into an institution must in itself be critiquing the institutions in order for it to be accepted by them, for me, only made this ‘critique’ into a flat out lie, a myth of what the work is or could be. It makes out that the value must be dictated by a critique of an authority in order to be accepted by that authority which, in turn, only makes it performative.
This only leads to a reduced crowd of people being able to access it as art itself is then made about art making specifically for institutions. It makes inaccessible work about a widely inaccessible industry. Bruno Munari’s critiques this in the opening to his essay ‘Design as Art’:
‘Today it has become necessary to demolish the myth of the 'star' artist who only produces masterpieces for a small group of ultra-intelligent people. It must be understood that as long as art stands aside from the problems of life it will only interest a very few people. Culture today is becoming a mass affair, and the artist must step down from his pedestal and be prepared to make a sign for a butcher's shop (if he knows how to do it). The artist must cast off the last rags of romanticism and become active as a man among men, well up in present-day techniques, materials and working methods. Without losing his innate aesthetic sense he must be able to respond with humility and competence to the demands his neighbours may make of him.
The designer of today re-establishes the long-lost contact between art and the public, between living people and art as a living thing. Instead of pictures for the drawing-room, electric gadgets for the kitchen. There should be no such thing as art divorced from life, with beautiful things to look at and hideous things to use. If what we use every day is made with art, and not thrown together by chance or caprice, then we shall have nothing to hide.’
However, for me, this opening also places the designer on a pedestal higher than the artist; that the two are in an eternal competition for nobility and only one can come out on top. Individualised criticism, in this case seems pointless as it seeks to demonise those who are trying to channel a long-lived interest and talent in creativity into a sustainable career within a system that would render it mostly unimportant. As a result, artists are demonised on Instagram as tax write offs, sellouts for pursuing art within an influencer lifestyle or transferring skills into commercial design when at times, they are merely trying to find something worth working for and are adapting to a system that promotes this type of creative work.
The idea that art making is a struggle only pushes it further into this box of nobility and religion. That it is untouched and holy, unable to be tarnished by capitalism’s grubby hands which in part is hopefully true. I want art to be untouched and holy, deep down I really do. I romanticise it to the point however where I don’t make anything. That it is so sacred and holy that even I, an unreligious mortal man, couldn’t touch it.
Since finishing university, I completed a residency that I was very fortunate to be given by the Museum of Making in Derby. In my proposal, I was going to use the time to explore the available workshops through an investigation into the lost craft of gargoyles and finally, finally, convince myself that I was a maker of some sort even if it meant forcing myself to be so. Six months pass and as I come to the end of the residency, I had made a chair in the final month and some drawings in the beginning; I didn’t have a lot of enjoyment from it, just a persistent air of guilt that I had put on myself, victimising myself in thinking I had wasted the museum’s time and had somehow ‘lied’ about what I wanted to do or be. More than anything I had lied to myself. I believed that I needed to be one thing, that it was hidden deep inside of me and that if I forced myself and tried really hard that this part of me that wanted to be a maker would come out and stay. But it didn’t and all the months of beating myself into this role, of the multiple ‘woe me’s’ I told myself about making art, ended up mostly pointless; it had just been a way of victimising myself into something I thought I wanted but realised I in fact did not enjoy. I felt like someone else was forcing me to make this type of work but there was nobody except me telling myself to do this, because work and making to me felt like something to overcome. Something consistently difficult when it in fact isn’t and is only a result of these ‘romanticised rags’ of the artist.
I felt like Zoolander in the acclaimed Ben Stiller directed film, Zoolander when he forces himself to change professions in order to fit into this idea of what he think he should be. Still the same person, just masking for my own victimisation.
I enjoy making but I think I liked the idea of being a maker more, just like I enjoy being a dancer more than dancing, a painter more than painting, someone more muscular but doesn’t exercise regularly. We are made to feel, now more than ever, that we should cram ourselves into titles such as the ‘1/3 artist, 2/3 entrepreneur’. To not split ourselves over multiple interests but to announce ourselves as specific roles in order for value to be gained from it. It’s the old-new saying; just because something isn’t financially valuable doesn’t make it any less important. We try to use every part of our body for an arm shaped hole for instance, breaking our bones, tearing our muscles to get into a form that we simply can’t fit all of ourselves into. We leave parts of our body behind that would fit more easily in other holes but because we are made to believe work needs to be difficult in order for it to have value, we abandon these for the difficult option.
This is the struggle that I think a lot of artists want or are made to feel they crave towards. The tormented mind of Ian Curtis or Vincent Van Gogh haunts creatives as a troubled idol that in dealing with difficulty, you are able to bring some value from it, to make beauty out of it. But sometimes, things are just ugly and difficult and there is very little point in making them beautiful.
I’ve been trying to dissect these ideas I have about art making being supposedly difficult through The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Aside from the somewhat heavy religious elements and the cliche of an artist completing this book, it gives good solid advice and exercises to use. I am now on week 9 (and have been for 3 weeks) and have written more than usual, abandoned exhibition work for the time being and have taken a dance class; I feel much happier and all of these things have come to me naturally and are a result of unblocking parts of myself that wanted to do these things all along but thought that because these are things that are easy to me (in the sense that I enjoy them) that they shouldn’t be pursued. Work should be challenging, yes, in the idea that it should lead you into the unknown, extending your comfort zone, which at times is difficult. But you shouldn’t feel victimised by this narrative or your own practice; the age old romantic idea that you ‘have no choice’ but to pursue something you enjoy is outdated too. Allowing yourself to do something easy and kind to yourself should be something you have no choice but to fulfil.
It’s not about enjoying something because it’s easy but finding it easy because you enjoy it. This stuck out for me at a recent visit at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm: