What Makes You An Artist?
- May 7, 2015
- 4 min read
I met a fantastic artist the other day and he was kind enough to read to me two of his poems. He has this great booming voice you would hear on the radio or television.
One was a traditional poem about men marching off to the Great War, thinking that it would be over in six months. The other was a bit abstract and required a bit more thought. You might classify it as post-modernism.
He asked me which one I liked better. The first one, about the war was more linear and as a storyteller I gravitated towards it. I knew poems like it and I had read them in school. It was easier to understand the emotion, the folly of mankind.
But the author challenged me. The one about the Great War was about a subject countless others had written about before him. It was written in a traditionalist style that had been borrowed from other great poets. He said he wouldn’t display it by itself but would be part of a greater visual work.
The second one was more original, non-linear, more creative. It didn’t follow any tradition or poetic guidelines. It was free flowing with no particular story. Rather the reader could interpret it from his or her own experiences.
In most things in life we try to learn from others, emulate things that work so we can be successful. In school we learn from textbooks and from teachers. We are told not to reinvent the wheel because there isn’t a shape that works as well.
Work long hours because successful people work long hours. Work up the corporate ladder. Have kids because other people are doing it.
Now I’m not saying those things can’t be all good, but it’s good to be original, to be a trail blazer.
For writers, it’s a great compliment to be told you write in the tradition of Fitzgerald, Hemmingway or Dostoevsky, if you’re novel has physiologically complex characters.
I have been in countless story meetings where someone has complained that the story isn’t original enough and I’ve always countered that there isn’t really an original story out there in the universe— Boy meets girl, boy loses girl etcetera.
The greatest writer in the English language, William Shakespeare, didn’t write an original story in his entire life for the love of God! What chance is there for the rest of us?
Does that mean we’re not true artists if we’re not original? Anybody can be a writer: it only takes a pen and pencil. But to be an artist, well, that is a different. That takes creativity, inspiration, mental effort.
In the dictionary an art is defined as the expression of human creative imagination and skill. But again that is using textbook definitions to define something that is, at the root of it, essentially undefinable.
How do we decide if something is beautiful or not? We can say it has ‘X’ and ‘Y’ qualities but until we see something we can’t really be sure.
It takes true creativity to really go out on a limb and do something original. It’s being experimental and realizing their art may not turn out the way they imagined it.
I can think of only one original story that I have read recently and that is Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It travels through time and space connecting people and species in a very unique way. It takes on themes that few other books do.
I think artists struggle with alternatively being creative and working for oneself and with pleasing other people— or being ‘commercial’ as some but it. But commercial shouldn’t be considered a negative term. We all want to be accepted by others and our work to be enjoyed.
Being commercial is often associated with ‘selling out’ but being commercial doesn’t need to be about the money, and often times it isn’t. It’s about making something for other people which is a truly beautiful gift if you think about it.
Are commercialism and creativity at a crossroads to one another?
I don’t necessarily think so.
When I think of creativity I think of artists who defined a generation and changed how we looked at the world. The impressionists or the abstract expressionists changed how we saw paintings.
In writing, Dostoevsky (who was Freud who took many of his theories from) it changed how we saw the human mind. These writers were commercial, even if they didn’t make any money and died in poverty.
What do you think defines creativity or art? Do you think someone can be commercial yet still be experimental I would love to hear what you think.
If you want to find out how discoverable you are on the internet check this tool out
Joel Mark Harris is a writer, film producer and marketer. He is the founder of Story Laboratory which helps artists market their work. To get a free ebook on How to Make Money Blogging and a Content Marketing Tool Kit sign up HERE
Comments