So it was awhile ago now that I read an interview with a rather brilliant musician in which they adamantly described their last album as "shitty"! For some reason I felt quite ridiculously saddened by this and all those songs off the album that previously made me feel good & strong & inspired now kinda hurt me. errr... yes, how overly sensitive of me!
And maybe it was all the recent fame/acclaim that caused those comments or maybe all artists just really love & hate their own work at the same time. Who knows? Regardless, it's fair enough, even if I completely disagree with the opinion. Every artist has a right to trash their own art. I remember when I was attending a friend's poetry night that one of his rules was you couldn't diss or make excuses for your poem before you read it out. This was surprizingly difficult but actually I appreciated it & the poems were left to stand on their own merit rather than any preconceived ideas.
Art, whatever its form, becomes like our children, or in some of our cases, sadly unloved mutant babies!! Every piece of art I produce, whether it's completely beautiful (rarely!) or hideously awkward (ummm, yes, not so rare...) comes from my flesh & blood. It's born of me, shares some of my traits, good & bad, & has some characteristics that seem uniquely its own. Occasionally these gargoyle infants are so embarrassing that I have to hide them from public view. I don't often have the heart to completely destroy them.
Case in point: I had a vision of two angels, like slashes of light in darkness, with their arced backs & wings to each other. It was amazingly fun to paint, lots of pallet knife swooshing. While it was drying & approaching completion I had it on display in my livingroom, which is where I work. A friend mentioned that it really resembled a giant vagina. WHAT!!??!! My spiritually divine painting looked like a giant pussy? Well, whatever. Men. I know what they think about. Next, a girlfriend of mine also said she thought it was a large, beautiful vagina. Oh God! I mean, I'm no Georgia O'Keeffe, maybe I subconsciously painted that, but to be honest, I think all angels are hot boys. I'm sure it says so in the Bible. Needless to say, I could never look at that painting in the same way again. It's tainted. Poor unloved baby sullenly gathering dust in my sewing room, you shall never see the light of day. I can't kill it & I can't fix it.
Further humiliation has occurred at poetry night when I've read a poem still raw & dripping blood to a deafening silence that lasts what seems like forever after I'm done. Usually afterwards someone has something constructive to say, or a question, hey, how about anything! Sometimes, well... lots I guess, I abandon any attempt to be erudite for words that stink & stab, harsh truth told boldly, LOUDLY!! I can't really be ashamed of these poems or drawings, even though they inadequately represent what I can create when I try. In a way, I love them more because they're uncomfortable bits of me that I've managed to dislodge.
The only art I've created that I actually despise didn't come from my heart/gut. Any time I have tried to create something that's deliberately just for pleasing others or forced in some way, I don't hesitate to rip it up and throw it in the garbage. If it's truth, then it's really you, no matter how bad or foolish it sounds/looks, it's worth keeping & defending because it's something real in this often surreally vapid society. Not all art is meant for sharing with everyone, or anyone. I think what really matters in the end is that your art contains yourself revealed in some way = truth, anything else is just a pretty but disposable background, or possibly shitty!!!
did I go off topic? Yes did I have a topic? Several actually! will I rant about this again? Undoubtedly!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
It's too bad that the painting is tainted for you. Ultimately though art is personal. If a musician decides they hate a song they wrote it has no bearing on me. The quality of, and interpretation of any art is decided by the individual viewer/listner not the artist. People like art because of what it means to them personally, not because of what it means to the artist. If people can't personalize it, it ultimately won't be successful. That's what I think anyway. Rant on my friend. Good post.
Post a Comment