Misunderstanding Artists
Why Most People Struggle to Understand Artists
A lot of people—first off—are scared away by the term artist. This goes for the general public (who often feel the word “artist” is somewhat pretentious and silly), and the artists themselves, who feel they’re not worthy of the title (and certainly some of them aren’t).
There’re key differences—in my humble opinion—between being a “writer,” say, and being an “artist.” Perhaps these distinctions are pointless, divisive and dumb, but, for me, they hold basic value.
In my view, a writer is anyone who puts down words on the page (physical and/or digital page), and the material might range anywhere from serious literary fiction to common journalism to popular plot-driven novels and stories, etc. There’s nothing wrong with any of these types or genres of writing, of course. You might write, say trendy pop-culture literary YA commercial novels (Young Adult), and why not?
But this differs greatly from Art. (The capital A is on purpose.) An artist is interested—go figure—in producing Art. What is Art? Well, in my book (pun very much intended), it’s anything that seriously and genuinely stretches it’s creative tentacles out towards some grand universal Truth. Not “truth” as in facts, but Truth as in sincere emotional truth. Further, the work searches desperately and ruthlessly for meaning. Art asks the tough questions: What does it mean to be a human being in a deep, universal way? What is the state of the human condition? What is it like to come into human consciousness, human awareness?
Art—written by artists—is a manner of seeing and hearing and feeling and understanding the world. The difference between simple writers and true artists is that artists possess inherently that layered, profound sensitivity which allows them to see people, places and things in a way that most people cannot. Most people are going about their lives being busy, caught up with the wild rapids of the roiling river that is Life. But the Artist sees and observes that which is not noticed by the average person. Artists are like psychological and emotional anthropologists; they are like aliens from another planet who step into this world and write down what they see so that the masses can grasp who and what they actually are.
Artists are freaks, in a sense. I call myself an artist for several reasons. First, because I very much possess that sensibility I mentioned. Second, because the expression of what I sense and see and hear and feel, both internally and externally, is constantly boiling within me, wanting, pleading to come out. As I discussed with Bowen Dwelle recently on a podcast conversation about manhood, Art, memoir, women, personal responsibility, mothers and more, I seek to, like all Artists, “externalize the internal.” Artists are spiritual architects; builders of the sensitive, emotional pyramids of the mind; trying to tackle a certain time and age and yet to be universal is the ultimate aim.
Artists in the 20th century such as James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Hemingway were some who sought this universal depth and search for meaning and understanding. Before them there were Flaubert—I’d argue the perfect consummate, exemplary Artist—Dostoevsky (strangely, both Flaubert and Dostoevsky were born in 1821, died in 1880 and 1881 respectively, and both suffered egregiously from epilepsy), Trollope, Dickens, Balzac, Hugo, etc. Of course you can go all the way back to the Greeks, to Homer if you’d like. To the beginning of the Western literary tradition.
In the latter half of the 20th century –say in the 1950s and 60s—you had Artists such as Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Susan Sontag, Kurt Vonnegut, Lionel Trilling, James Baldwin, Maya Angelou, etc. More recently I’d argue we’ve had (and still do have) Artists in prose-stylists such as Zadie Smith (who is incredible), Ottessa Moshfegh, Elif Batuman, Ta-Nihisi Coates, Jonathan Franzen (who I see as a more contemporary, middleclass Dickens), Denis Johnson, Isabelle Allende, Margaret Atwood, Emma Cline, etc.
The above are some Artists I can think of who aimed/are aiming at Universal Truth, depth of meaning, understanding of sensibility, attempting to grasp at the sordid human condition, trying to describe the emotional layers of being alive in a certain time and place, hoping to achieve some level of clarity around the madness of being alive.
Like most Artists, I’ve never been obsessed with money or traditional work. Now, full disclosure: I come from the upper middle-class. I understand my own privilege. I’m not pretending that isn’t a factor. And an important one. However, I’ve also known enough other Artists and writers personally, many of whom come from more working-class backgrounds, and have read enough biographies on Artists, to know that I am not in the minority view here. Artists are different for many reasons, as I have already noted, but one reason is that the notion of working a 9-5 and trying to make a lot of money is not only profoundly boring and soul-crushing, but it simply gets in the way of the Art.
Art, too, usually comes to Artists in the form of a compulsion. It’s very much like an addiction. Being 13 years sober from alcoholism, I know this feeling well. Just one more drink, the alcoholic tells him or herself. And then of course we’re “off to the races” again. Similarly, you might call writing a “biblio-obsession,” something which you simply cannot NOT do. I remember being told even by my creative writing teachers (amazingly) at San Francisco State University that I “shouldn’t try to be a writer” because it doesn’t make any money. Isn’t that a little…absurd? I mean don’t get me wrong: They were completely correct about that statement; writing doesn’t make any (or at least much) money.
But, as any Artist worth their salt knows, Art isn’t done for the money. Sure, every Artist (ok: most artists) would love to be both critically acclaimed and make boatloads of bread…but that isn’t how it goes 99.999% of the time. (Although the contemporary and still-very-young writer Emma Cline, who I met randomly at a café in Brooklyn once, in 2016, who wrote a novel that year called The Girls, a fictionalized account of the 1960s Manson girls, famously [in literary circles] got a $3 million advance for this, her debut, novel. She got profoundly lucky. Yet also another young talented female author, Stephanie Danler, who published her debut, Sweetbitter, the same year [2016] also famously made a $1 million advance.)
The above are mostly exceptions to the rule. (Although my ex-Nazi-turned-anti-hate-activist client Christian Picciolini’s book, which I edited, White American Youth, a memoir, made a healthy advance as well. Click HERE to read my old post about working with Christian.)
I want to address the “pretentiousness” angle re calling oneself an Artist. Here’s the way I see it. Flaubert and Dostoevsky were “supposed,” according to their families, to be a lawyer and an engineer respectively. But both men—born in the same year, one from France and one from Russia—were Artists. They had that classic inherent drive and sensibility. They suffered from The Compulsion. They were both rebels, free-thinkers and outsiders, doomed for many years to wander aimlessly in their lives until stumbling upon the need to produce creative work. They chased life experience, researched, were psychological anthropologists, became pregnant with knowledge and empirical truths until they at last birthed their Art. A true Artist cannot NOT do their work. They don’t, as Flaubert said, “choose” their subject; the subject, rather, chooses them. The writing comes to them when they sit in the chair. It's like how music was for Beethoven, Bach, or, in modern times, Bob Dylan.
Now, Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Beethoven, Bach, Dylan: These men are also all geniuses. In no way am I suggesting that all “true Artists” are geniuses. I am, obviously, most certainly NOT a genius. That is laughable. I’m smart, for sure, but nothing in any way resembling genius. And I’m glad for that. Geniuses often struggle with normal life. Artists do, too, but not to the degree of geniuses. There are plenty of generally smart people in the world—many who are, clearly, much, much smarter than me—and obviously not all of them are Artists. Many are actors and musicians and work on Wall Street and are journalists and fashion designers and computer programmers etc. (My father, a computer scientist, was fairly brilliant, I will say that.)
My point is: I don’t see myself as being “pretentious” because when you boil it all down what I’m really saying is: I’m good at this one very narrow, limited thing called Art. I can’t fix a car’s engine. I suck at financial planning. Working on backyard landscapes tires and confuses me. In some areas—ask my fiancée—I am absolutely impractical and lacking in commonsense. (I was once fired from a pizza restaurant job, at age 25 in 2008, because I got too overwhelmed and lost my serving pad.) When it comes to the normal, conventional, typical inner workings of regular day to day life: I am not so talented. Sometimes people think I’m stupid. This was very common with thinkers and writers such as Flaubert, Dostoevsky and Rousseau as well. It seems to be a somewhat common Artistic trait.
Anyway, my grand point here is: Let Artists be Artists. Why deride, decry, people who are usually only really strong in one main area, who already feel like aliens, outsiders and freaks, and who feel totally torn away from the world at large? Especially today, in a contemporary world which values Art almost not at all, seeing as its been sidelined more and more and more over the decades due to the internet, social media, iPhones, video games, YouTube, TikTok, podcasts, TV, general constant busyness, political ideology, tribalism, etc etc etc.
There’s really only a very narrow sliver left for honest, true Artists, and now it seems people are anxious to close that sliver all the way because Artists seem “pretentious.” Well, maybe Artists ARE pretentious. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. But even if they are, don’t we still NEED Art? Isn’t it still crucial to hold space for non-political aesthetes whose only concern is for depth, meaning, clarity, to show us all back to ourselves? In a world dominated by a social media hall of smoke and mirrors, where half our lives, if not more, are now “lived” online, don’t we still need that special, unique class of men and women who look society square in the face and call bullshit?
Perhaps Art is dying; perhaps it’s already dead. Maybe social media, tribalism, identity politics and the iPhone killed it, stabbing it mutually like the senators did Caesar. But even if that is the case, there can’t be any legitimate reason at this point for further burying the carcass. The body has already been stabbed. Let’s see if maybe, just maybe, we can value the few remaining Artists we have around the globe. Because we’re still out there, our flashlight beams yellow and bright and small against the massive darkness that is contemporary society.
Allow us to live, to exist, to say our piece.
I agree with, and identify with, so much of what you write here about artists: those who feel the need to make the internal external, who seek and express those emotional and timeless truths, whose art seeks them out in ways we cannot resist, who would create their art whether it paid a cent or was ever read or acclaimed or stood the test of time or any other external reward, but do so only because they must and seems essential to who and what they are. And because doing so fulfills them, answers a need. Because the work of creating this is so interesting and challenging and inspiring and so gives so much pleasure. And we only want to be left alone so we can do this work, and whether it finds its place in the world or not is not our business and not the point, although the offering must be made, for it's not for us alone. It really doesn't belong to us at all.
Your passion is your superpower, Michael. Must say though that having met more than several artists - and knowing two enough to call friends - except for one (Abbie Hoffman) you would walk by them on the street and they were like everyone else. No pretense. They sought no overt attention. Writing (in one case) and being left alone to paint (in another) was enough for them.