A few days ago, prompted by a comment left by Don Hall elswhere, I posited a question as to how exactly an artist can fuck up art. It was half facetious witticism, half rhetorical mulling and half a serious call for others' thoughts. In my mind, it served all three halves quite well. The response was thoughtful and varient (and all Chicago-based, which helped in taking on these perspectives). Now for the results of the rhetorical mulling.
A caveat: I am aware that this conversation is universal and, as a result, endless. This means, of course, that it has been hashed out many times before -- probably on some of these very blogs -- and will be again. This I understand and treat this as a mutually understood fact. If the artist/audience or any similar discussion has been revisited enough times to make you throw up in your mouth a little, I suggest you stop reading now and wait for my next post. I'll even be particularly accomodating and devote some space in that one to a lolcat or two. Now pardon me while I work some shit out.
Since writing my intial post, I've taken to thinking about my creative urge: where it comes from, what it strives for, all that fun interstitial stuff. The regionalism brouhaha and divergent rumblings of 'writing what you know' have also added to the mix. And because it's what I do best, my resultant thoughts are going to come in my typical rambling, half stream-of-conciousness, half who-the-fuck-just-took-over-Paul's-brain style.
I believe in art for art's sake; unapologetically so. Which is to say, I believe in art for the artist, because anyone claiming 'art's sake' is necessarily isolating the position of artist. Which is cool with me. When I create, I do it for me. When I'm writing or directing, I'm writing or directing what I want to see or hear. Self-indulgent? Technically speaking, I suppose so, but I fail to see the point in writing or directing something I don't want to see or hear. A friend of mine once relayed a major paper she had written in college revolving around the thesis that no one at any point in life does anything they do not want to. In essence, that there is no such thing as a selfless act -- charity is done as much or more for the inner feeling of content it provides than for the recipients of the charity. That warm fuzzy feeling that follows random acts of kindness? That's the primary reason for the random act of kindness. We are a people (and by we I am speaking globally) of self-preservation, so we act out of self-interest.
Sound harsh? It's really not. In today's It Takes A Village society, the word selfish has gained a terrible connotation, because it's all or nothing -- either your are selfish or you are selfless. The implication from this dichotomy is that one's own interests do not coincide with the interests of the rest of the world. So we are made to feel guilty for acting out of self-interest, a habit we cannot quit. Why can't we embrace the fact that we can at once have our interests and the interests of others in mind, or even (gasp of gasps!) that acting on our own interests can have a natural benefit for others from time to time? I'm not going to deny that there can be an ugly side to selfishness or that self-obsession is an unfavorable trait, but 'me first' is not synonymous with 'everyone else can fuck off and die'.
In the case of art and the artist, it seems particularly heinous to not play for the audience, because in artistry, as opposed to many other professions, the benefit for the consumer is intangible. If an artist doesn't make a point of stating his intent in helping to make the world a better place, the positive effects of art are much harder to grasp and define than, say, the positive effects that come from a teacher or a doctor. We all realize that they are there, of course, but focusing on them allows us (and those critical of what we do) to have something undeniably positive to cling to. In the first Art of Fucking It Up, Tony mentioned us getting off of our pedestals. I'm not calling him out in particular -- it's a phrase we hear all the time -- but why is creating with ourselves in mind naturally equated with elitism? We don't use that logic in other professions: a doctor who practices out of a love for what he or she does isn't chastised (quite the opposite, in fact). Is it because artists are in the unique position of being as directly affected by their work as the audience? Because in the doctor/patient relationship the doctor doesn't become a patient as well?
And that is the difference in the world of artistry -- my interests are bound to be the same as a portion of my audience. In AFIU pt. 1, Don Hall said:
I've always said that the sign of a good director (playwright, improviser, actor, etc.) is that he can communicate a story worth communicating.
The sign of a great director (playwright, improviser, actor, etc.) is that he can communicate a story worth communicating and that someone else wants to hear and agrees that the story is worth communicating.
I disagree, not with the sentiment, but with the stipulations. There's no difference between the two definitions Mr. Hall has provided. Any story that an artist feels is worthy of communicating will find people that agree. The
number of people who agree may be unpredictable, but there will always be someone else. And that unpredictability is exactly why I don't worry about the audience when creating -- I at once am confident that there will be a section of the audience who is with me and confident that I have no idea which section they are or why they agree. I'm not projecting my vision and my ideals onto others, I'm simply throwing them into the ether and seeing who else wants to play with them.
Which seems to lead into the matter of accessibility.
Bob Fisher, in his comparison of the artistic process to a conversation, mentioned the 'whole new kind of success' of reaching an audience who thought they weren't invested. He's right, it is a great success, and I'm left wondering where that line is between being accessible and pandering. I think the key is somewhere in that ether. If an artist throws his ideas at an audience, they are going to immediately bounces off of those with different ideas, who have already set up a defense system just for this sort of instance. If an artist tries to handfeed an audience what they want, they're going to turn their heads because they aren't dogs and don't appreciate being treated as such (and the artist probably doesn't know what most of them want anyway). But if an artist simply does what he does and allows the audience to do what they do with it, there's room for both to examine what the other is bringing to the table before any decisions are made.
Art should be a question, not a statement. To be even more effective, a question of a rhetorical nature rather than one aimed at the audience. Of course it's not going to be successful with everyone -- some audience members are only going to want to see what they want to see (just like the narrow-minded artists I just described) and other audience members will come in with an open mind and will examine the artist's wares and will still walk away unsatisfied and/or uninterested. And that's ok, because no art will ever hit everyone.
This is an idea that at once fascinates, frightens, and inspires me. No art will ever be universally liked. And no art will ever be universally disliked. And I'm going to go ahead and bring that to a broader philosophical assumption. There is no such thing as Good Art and Bad Art. Oh, there is art that I think is good and I think is bad, and there is art that Don Hall or Hedy Weiss or my mother think is good and bad, but there is no Good Art. And there is no Bad Art. Pick any work of art that you absolutely love or hate -- Piss Christ or Picasso, the music of Eminem or Mary Chapin Carpenter, the new movie starring The Lohan or L'Avventura, Neil LaBute or Neil Simon -- and someone out there, someone approaching the work earnestly, disagrees. Someone is inspired by what you despise and someone despises what inspires you. And as a result, I tend to answer the question of the day, "How can an artist fuck it up?" with a simple "He can't."
If an artist is only interested in numbers (either heads or dollars) and doesn't get them, he's fucked it up. If an artist doesn't enjoy what he has put on stage, he's fucked it up. But if an artist is doing what he does as a release, a celebration, an exploration and an invitation (none of which require anything from the artist except honesty), there is no wrong answer and no fucking it up.
P.Rekk
2007
