The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America

While the first two definitions of “artistic failure”—as bad art work; as a failed artist—are valid and will come into play in discussions on this site, The Chronicle of Artistic Failure intends to apply a different primary definition to the term.

The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America will argue that  “artistic failure” is the severe and irrevocable decline of the practice of art in this country. Artistic failure is a national crisis that encompasses the struggles of myriad failing and failed artists across this country, as well as the failure of the entire structure that supports artists and arts viewing. Artistic failure is the cynical and distressing breakdown of an entire society’s former commitment to and involvement in the wider cultural endeavor that is art-making.

This site will use this working definition of artistic failure to spur its researches into the real working lives of artists, to provide context for what happens to individual artists throughout their career, to synthesize these details in a way that builds a larger argument for wider systemic support of the arts, and to compile a larger picture about how what we do today will likely affect the future of art.

The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America, then, is a record of my odyssey to understand the wider cultural import of our communal artistic failure, compiled for the hopeful purpose of spurring Americans to collectively rise up and fulfill our national creative promise. My intention for writing this chronicle is to make this country a better place for artists to make art. For these reasons, this project will be a combination of social criticism, journalistic muckraking, personal memoir, and a polemical call to arms. And while my writing may not actually achieve its lofty goals, at the very least, I hope, it will give clarity to the indignation and  exasperation felt by numerous arts people around the country, or perhaps it will give grist to someone, somewhere who can take tangible steps toward solving what ails artists and the arts here.

In the end, by focusing on artistic “failure,” I hope to contribute to its eventual success.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 23rd, 2007 at 1:03 pm and is filed under Failed artist, Art in America, Definition of Artistic Failure, Artistic failure in America, Decline of art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.