Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the fairest (artist) of them all?
Trying to cost the price of vanity can prove rather difficult. Narcissism can be an expensive pastime, although those who exploit this unattractive human frailty should on all counts pay a higher moral price, karmically speaking. Yet in the greater scheme of things, they don’t. Why? Well first off we don’t live our lives as characters in a worthy tome, or even through the trivialised conclusions of fairytales and folklore. We live here, in reality, where chancers make fools of us all. There’s just too much money to be made in massaging egos and there are enough of us in dire need of the service to keep the quick-fix merchants in the splendour they purport to promise every poor soul they come across.
Vanity is a strange beast, it rears its ugly head at the least opportune of moments, unjustified and for the main part unsubstantiated by one and all. There are few amongst us who have not to some degree suffered the harsh blows of public opinion, be it one’s friends, family, associates, contemporaries or society at large. Those who have taken it upon themselves to venture in to the world of visual arts, literature, indeed almost every peculiarly creative person on this planet, will from time to time engage in a silent battle of reason and logic over the supremely divisive yet alluring conjecture of the ego.
Without the human fallibility for self-aggrandisement there would be no such thing as vanity galleries and vanity publishers, yet there are and so the condition remains. Artists need exposure, they need to present their creations to the world at large, it’s a simple and rather painful fact of life that many will not achieve the recognition (or even the derision) they duly deserve within their lifetime, or perhaps ever. The truth is art is more than mere reflection of or on life, emotionally or otherwise, the subjective microscope that is the artist’s eye can no more afford to be blurred with the perceptions of the mass, than can an overweight person take advice on healthy eating from the owner of a cake shop. If they listen to everything they hear, follow with due diligence every public opinion, they will either submerge themselves in a sea of banality or lose all sense of creative direction, put down their paintbrush, their pen, their chisel, their pencil, their camera, or any other tool of the trade they might have once poured their personal universe through and on to the medium of their choice, and stop dead in their tracks, never to create again.
- If you see yourself as an artist, someone who does more than merely reinterpret the over-interpreted.
- As one who challenges the status quo of image and form.
- As one who deliberately ventures forth into a rarely explored region of creativity for no other gain than the insights it may bring.
- if you do not merely craft and if your creations are more than the spawn of mere form and function.
Then you as many before you will regularly feel at a loss, adrift on a tide of a cultural ebb and flow, of a sociological tide bound by the orbit of fashion and the omniscient flights of fancy that the media filter from the top down to the very bottom, of this empirical conspiracy that is our all-knowing, all-wanting, all-needing fellowship of greed and short attention spans. In other words, you can’t buy love as the Fab Four once said in so many words; it has to be earned, as does respect and recognition, and in essence if one has none of this within themselves, it can never be reflected, however faintly by the outside world.
Timing is also of the essence, creative minds must set their clocks a little earlier than those who simply consume originality rather than produce it themselves. Originality is too a misnomer to be handled with care, nothing Man does is original nor ever will be, originality works upon the same relative scale of philosophy and cultural shift or Zeitgeist. Beyond that there is both technical ability as well as the avant-gardism of choice and application of materials. Everything under the sun can come into play when it involves the notoriety of an artist, but there is no simple answer, and most definitely no easy one.
I have had my troubles, mirrors at times have haunted me and left me with emotional and psychological scars that have fed my creative source, my inner self, where beauty and ugliness wrestle each other for the ultimate truths unbound. Many years ago I found myself on LSD sitting at an ex-girlfriend’s apartment (or she soon would be) staring into a mirror as my mind began to melt, and there in what should have been my reflection, were a thousand others. Some of them i recognised, others still remain strangers to this very day, but collectively they signified a state of being, "being everybody", that is what turns an anybody into a somebody, becoming the mirror of all and forsaking oneself in the process.
Although it’s a rather unfair saying, "those that can’t do, teach", the origins of the quote are murky to say the least. One of the earliest recorded and published permutations appears in George Bernard Shaw‘s "Maxims for Revolutionists" in Man and Superman (1903), however it most probably dates back far further. A fairer statement would be "those who can’t do, exploit". If one cannot create one can exploit those who do, in effect positing positive or negative reflections of the creations of another. This is something we all do in our everyday lives, yet some will do more than merely comment on that which they cannot achieve themselves, they will engage in an exploitation of those who can for monetary or a whole gamut of personal advantageous gains.
"If one cannot trust one’s own perception of one’s chosen path, one has most likely made the wrong choice" – Paul Baines – 2009. It is a difficult life being an artist of any medium, and one must face rejection as part and parcel of their choice in lifestyle, career and endeavour, it is indeed the human experience for us all, yet if one has the ability to absorb both positive and negative experiences and engage with them creatively, one can reach new peaks of insight and achievement. Statements like these are exactly the sort I try to avoid, I practice what I preach, yet I resent the fact that I have been forced into a position where I must preach at all, it’s just a word to the wise. I do not consider what I have to say as any more important than the next guy, it is my ego at work allowing me to dwell on such suppositions. My smattering of excuses are for the main part trivial, despite a few weeks lack of sleep, a partner suffering from food poisoning, a schedule that can never be met on time, and many other contributing factors, the experience which has jarred me most recently is the realisation that I have crossed the threshold of acceptable behaviour as regards to my own sense of self identity and in essence, ego.
If I were a screenplay writer with a script worth selling I would expect an advance, a monetary compensation for the quality of my product, but not for my efforts, not for the time taken to produce it, not for the sweat of my brow, but merely for the result. The same can be said for any successful author, but the visual artist must in essence do more of the guesswork on their path to success, they must reflect on the potential of each exchange, each brush with publicity. To pay a gallery to exhibit one’s work is not a crime in itself, yet to pay someone who may earn a commission from selling one’s work to do their job is plain and simply wrong.
I will pay one or the other, not both, either a commission or a fee, and for those who feel otherwise, however worthy the risk, risk is risk no matter how you look at it. An artist has costs to pay, their life consists of the very same needs and requirements as any gallery owner, any agent, any arts publisher, and there is no reason for an artist to pay more than the value of their art for the sake of bringing it to a wider public’s attention.
I was approached by a publisher of dubious reputation today, they wished to include my work in their annual publication and wanted approximately $2500 to "contribute to the costs of production". I have realised that those gallery owners and publishers that have proceeded her were doing just the same thing as she is, they are pandering to my vanity, providing a false reflection of my status in the arts world. I must earn my position. There is no quick route through to success, only through time, effort, imagination, and perhaps even luck, I may breakthrough on to the international scene or may not, either way that was my chosen experience. In the meantime I will do what I believe I do best, and create my art, my particular and peculiar vision of the world and with the right cultural climactic conditions and the most intuitive of perceptions, only then I might just achieve my goals. If I don’t I know destiny has something else in store for me, that is just the way the wind blows.
Understand there is a false world of vanity galleries and vanity arts publishers, they cannot represent or provide any artist with true success. If you receive an offer too good to be true and all you need to do is pay hand over fist for the privilege, visit this site first:
Art Alarm – Vanity art gallery and publishing scams.
Nice post! Thanks!
Jasmine’s last blog post..today goes like a wheelbarrow