A new artistic affliction: Importantitis
Posted by: admin in Terry Teachout, importantitis, artistic self-consciousness, Americans pretty much hate artists, Artists are their own worst enemies, Doomed artist, Artistic delusion, The tortured artist, Artistic failure in AmericaArts and culture critic Terry Teachout has, today in a great Wall Street Journal essay, coined a new term that describes the tendency of certain successful artists to fail: importantitis. Touching on the careers of Leonard Bernstein (post-West Side Story), Orson Welles (post-Citizen Kane), and Ralph Ellison (post-Invisible Man)—all of whom struggled because they were “strangled by self-consciousness” in trying to make, after their initial success, the next great work of art.
In the article, the author proposes Teachout’s First Law of Artistic Dynamics: “The best way to make a bad work of art is to try to make a great one.” The Chronicle of Artistic Failure humbly proposes its own corollary to the First Law of Artistic Dynamics: “The best way for an artist to fail is to live in America.”
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February 16th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
Equally instructive, and properly balancing the failure you choose to highlight, is the paragraph on Balanchine. Approach one’s work like an an artist craftsman, packing the lunch pail and the coffee thermos, and just go to work, day after day. We need more blue-color artists, and to hold that ethic and discipline up for emulation.
I had the chance to think about this very topic today in the shop, working on a (relatively) small piece. I had no real expectations for it, just started a new sculpture because that’s what you do when you finish the last one. As it turns out, this may just be one of the best pieces I’ve ever made. Go figure.
February 16th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
I agree with you in re: Balanchine. The workaday approach to art is likely the best, most professional way to be…
At the same time, I disagree with you about this: “this may just be one of the best pieces I’ve ever made.” The artist, as is pointed out here, is not in the best position to judge his/her own work. That’s for the public to decide.
Thanks, as always, for weighing in.
February 17th, 2008 at 12:25 am
That link is broken, but it seems to want to go to the post prior to this one about artists afraid to sell their own work. In which case, I don’t see the connection.
I agree that an artist may not make a value judgment concerning their own work in line with the judgment of posterity, but it doesn’t follow that they should not make value judgments at all. In fact, that is all work is, a series of successive choices, favoring what is believed to be the one of higher value. Over time and experience, hopefully insight is gained and the ability to recognize works of higher value is increased.
That is why we listen to accomplished individuals and give their words more weight than the random local bum. If the success of a work were truly random, and outside the awareness of the maker, then this would not be the case. Likewise, the negative is true. In the examples above, Bernstein believed he was making tripe… and he was.
Like the saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Knowing that value statements we make may not be “objectively” true should not keep us from having the courage to assert anything at all.
February 17th, 2008 at 9:36 am
The connection (with the last post) is that artists often are too emotionally invested in their work, and attach too much of their own egos to the products of their own hands, to be in a good position to judge their own art.
You may be that rare artist that is able to divorce the product of the hand from your own ego. If so, that is good for you.
As for the idea that we listen to “accomplished individuals” in assessing our art, that would probably be true–except that most artists do not know such people or have access to them. Generally, most artists I know work in a sort of hermetic isolation. I’ve heard hundreds of times the complaint from artists that “I never get any feedback about what I’m doing.” Good working critics are rare these day, meaning any artist-critic interaction is wrought with expectation and anxiety (one of the reasons I’ve soured somewhat on doing reviews locally). The artist, without regular outside input, gets protective about the art. And in the end, forced to spend ever more time alone with the art, the artist invests ever more ego into their work and fully loses the ability to self-assess… It’s a grand self-defeating circle.
Of course, I speak in round and general terms that exaggerate the problem to make a point. And again, it sounds like this is not the case for you, which is as it should be. My biggest complaint is that most artists keep very poor professional standards in how they interact with other professionals (critics, galleries, grant-makers, etc). My main theory why this is so is that most of this starts with the way artists are taught to think about their work (as expression of self) in school. This is just one line of questioning I’m working on through this web endeavor.