The Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America

The essay I wrote about the current cultural overemphasis on creativity-for-creativity-sake (which included a small jab at all the pointless blogs overrunning the internet), interestingly created a modest amount of buzz in the blogosphere. That is, the original version of the essay–published on mnartists.org–was linked to by dozens of bloggers. This is first time anything like this has happened to any of the 170 or so arts pieces I’ve published in the past ten years. Probably this is because the sentiments of the piece run so counter to our culture’s received wisdom, but it may also have something to do with the times (and the explosion in the number of blogs).

For samples of the blogoscussion on the Creativity that Kills, go here, here, or here. There seem to be three basic reactions to this essay’s ideas. The first, and surprisingly most common, is “Amen, brother!” The idea that there are too many creative people and too much cultural emphasis on creativity seems to have touched a nerve for a lot of people. Of course, the people are quick to cast fingers at everyone else–saying, “Yes, I wish all those other people would stop trying to make art!” But I suppose this is human nature (to blame others and avoid blaming oneself).

The second reaction is “That guy’s just bitter!” This may or may not be true, but it was not my intention to come across as someone whose view of art and artists is ruled by his bitterness. Instead, as I hope is becoming clear on the Chronicle of Artistic Failure in America, I intend to look at difficult or troubling aspects of the art world solely in the hopes that things will one day be better. In some ways, you could say I’m a hopeless optimist about art and its role in the culture. Still, I’ve taken this reader reaction (that I’m “just bitter”) to heart and have made revisions to the original essay.

The third reaction is “He may be right, but things are no different now than they’ve ever been; there’s always been a lot of bad art and very little good art.” I won’t go into all the reasons that I disagree with this, but I would like to point out that those who had this response said nothing in response to my essay’s description of how “creativity” is overmanifesting itself in the culture (and what this does to a potential art audience):

“…we’ve become so inundated with creativity–in weblogs dedicated to every petty interest and whim, in vanity websites created by people of not much interest, in random belly-gazing podcasts of the braindead, in home-edited YouTube snoozefests, in well-meaning “preprofessional” writing associations, in endless craft groups and quilting associations and art meet-ups, and so on and so on—that actual audiences for honest-to-goodness good art and real creativity and cultural production are driven into hiding. Isn’t it the supreme and telling irony that even as the cultural emphasis on creativity grows, the actual audience for art is shrinking in real numbers?”

One of the bloggers suggested my beef is with the entire Web 2.0 movement. As someone who’s used the web to expand my audience (through blogs, websites, and other such web services), I started to object to this, but then I read Andrew Keen’s anti-Web 2.0 screed, The Cult of the Amateur. Here’s his take on a similar problem (the loss of quality public discourse), which I think connects up well with my thoughts on creativity:

“We–those of us who want to know more about the world, those of us who are the consumers of mainstream culture–are being seduced by the empty promise of the “democratized” media. For the real consequences of the Web 2.0 revolution is less culture, less reliable news, and a chaos of information. One chilling reality in this brave new digital epooch is the blurring, obfuscation, and even disappearance of truth… The undermining of truth is threatening the quality of civil public discourse, encouraging plagiarism and intellectual property theft, and stifling creativity… Instead of more community, knowledge, or culture, all that Web 2.0 really delivvers is more dubious content from anonymous sources, hijacking our time and playing to our gullibility.”

“For my generation, artistic self-expression was high on the list of things that would make life worth living. But generally most of us failed to do that. I know so many people who feel they have failed. We are a massively deluded generation. We all wanted to be pop stars, indie film-makers, poets, painters, conceptual artists. Out of 300 people I know, who I have grown up with, there are four who have managed to do that. It seems crazy that that means there are 276 people who are living a life of resentment. We have a set of unrealistic expectations about sustaining a creative life in the midst of a consumer culture.”

-Scottish author Ewan Morrison, who  describes himself as “very much a part of the Gen X mindset that art and culture can liberate you from the mundanity of your all too predictable life. “

An article by Sharon Butler in the Oct. 2007 edition of the Brooklyn Rail posits, without giving too many specifics, a looming decline in the market for contemporary art, and it suggests practical steps that artists can take to deal with it.

“With the economy slowing down,” she writes, “hedge funds getting shaky, and investors seeking refuge, the art market seems certain to contract in a big way… The emerging battalion of artists on the thin margin of commercial viability is imperiled, and so is the fragile infrastructure that supports them.”

Butler suggests artists will likely fact the following difficulties: being left without representation, losing artwork that is being kept “in storage” by galleries, gallery check kiting and withholding payment for work previously sold, fewer exhibition opportunities for younger artists, fewer part-time jobs for artists, flatter career trajectories for artists, and drops in prices for art.

As a result, she expects: “An artist used to sunnier times wonders whether she or he should continue making art.”

Here’s the crux of the article, from the point of view of www.artisticfailure.com:

Outsiders may regard all this angst as the hand-wringing of spoiled children. After all, American art did not merely survive but flourished after the Depression and World War II. Why should we worry about it now? Real artists will stay their course and make their mark. The idea is that the free market, hard or soft, will filter through the truly great ones. It’s a hopeful and very American notion, but that market, at least for artists, has not historically been so bountiful. Yes, Abstract Expressionism sprung from children of the Depression. But artists like Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, James Brooks, Balcombe Greene, and Norman Lewis—to name but a few painters of the era—fed themselves on wages from the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration before they hit it big. Yes, minimalism flourished after the war. But Ellsworth Kelly and Al Held were able to go to Paris and find their muses only because of the GI Bill. Federal subsidies, it would appear, were key to sustaining the nation’s artistic capital.

Systemic sources of extra-market support for artists still exist, but they are not as abundant, generous, or widely available as the WPA was in the Thirties or the GI Bill was in the Forties and Fifties. In this light, it is perhaps too harsh to say that true artists would not default to careers in banking, IT, law, social work, cabinetry, or teaching, as many have. Galleries and collectors once committed to nurturing these artists may simply move on to the new crop of art school graduates, renewing the market cycle. But we’ll never know how their work might have developed had economic opportunities not deserted them. It is a virtual certainty that at least a few of them would have been great, so their foregone contribution could be considered a cultural loss and a failure of the market.

These sentiments are very similar to ones in a published essay I wrote last spring about the education of artists. I noted the disdain and antipathy that surveys show most people have regarding artists, and I also noted that, even so, more and more people seem to romanticize their own interest in making art. “What’s most unfortunate,” I wrote, “is that our country’s paradoxical attitudes about art–i.e., the coupling of a wishful attitude about creativity and a resentment of creative people—has coincided with a constant rise in the numbers of people seeking formal artistic educations.”

The rest of my article maintains a similar passionately ambivalent, slightly resigned shrug-of-the-shoulders tone as Sharon Butler’s. Doubtless, there is no solution for artists, for gallerians, for art lovers, or for the arts market to create its own success. Times will be hard in art, but artists will survive, or as Butler puts it: “the right blend of humility and constructive opportunism can see many artists through. The hardest thing for the individual artist will be striking a psychological balance between Pollyannaism and panic.”