Naked I came into the world, but brush strokes cover me, language raises me, music rhythms me. Art is my rod and staff, my resting place and shield, and not mine only, for art leaves nobody out even those from whom art has been stolen away by tyranny, by poverty, begin to make it again. If the arts did not exist, at every moment, someone would begin to create them, in song, out of dust and mud, although the artifacts might be destroyed, the energy that creates them is not destroyed. — Jeanette Winterson, Art Objects
To survive (and it’s important to survive) we must be aware of our current situation and the “state of things.” In other words, we need to be able to adapt. For the artist, that has always been the challenge. Not only is it unnatural to conform to dogma and to stray from one’s instinct, to do so speaks out against everything that an artist has been brought into this world to do. Creators throughout human history have been both destined and burdened with the job of challenging the status quo and introducing new ways of conquering problems. Artists not only reflect society by being excellent seers and documenters of their environment but also affect it by being innovators. That said, new ways aren’t usually popular ways. We must fight to make it happen.
And this despite living in a modern technologically dominant world. The new may appear to be welcome, but often it’s an illusion. For art is usually only welcome under the new world’s own terms — conditions that conform with the current demands of industry and profit. Efficiency and short-term success rule the day, and thus most decision-making when it comes to projects and process. I remember my agent once told me that a successful colleague of mine would’ve never been able to sell his art now if he had not already been famously successful because he is “far too slow.” Today’s marketplace demands not only art that’s deemed desirable but that which arrives on schedule. Deadlines make or break artists and studios. Every artist working in books, illustration, animation or film understands fully this predicament. As sad as it is to say, there’s hardly an art form now NOT tainted by the demands of finance and technology.
“If man — if each one of us — abdicates his responsibilities with regard to values; if each one of us limits himself to leading a trivial existence in a technological civilization, with greater adaptation and increasing success as his sole objectives; if we do not even consider the possibility of making a stand against these determinants, then everything will happen as I have described it, and the determinates will be transformed into inevitabilities.” ― Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society
The trend is troubling. The advance of technique has hurried the world exponentially and there seems to be no stopping it. If efficiency (quickness) is the overwhelming goal, then how can we achieve quality? And how is an artist to survive, never mind prosper, in such an environment?
What’s particularly insidious about rationalizations that resistance present to us is that a lot of them are true. They’re legitimate… What resistance leaves out, of course, is that all this means diddly.” — Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
This, of course, cannot be answered in any sort of rational manner. And that’s exactly the point; doing art is hardly rational. If it were, it wouldn’t be any fun doing it. But it’s amazing how often the challenge presents itself. Almost at every opportunity — be it struggles with money, disapproval of others, success of others, setbacks both short-term and long-term — resistance wants to make you stop doing YOUR art, stop doing what you’ve worked so hard to be doing.
I recently had dinner with an architect friend of mine about this topic and my own personal work which I noted isn’t exactly aligned with the conceptual trends of the day and she said with a laugh: “You know what to do and how to do it! You just have to sell out.” I vehemently denied of course, but the emotions beneath my own insecurity were easily aroused. It takes courage and discipline to stay the course. It’s not easy, of course, but we’ve got to keep reminding ourselves why we’re here. To honor one’s calling is to respect ourselves and our God-given talents by accepting the challenge. And often times, a nasty challenge is exactly what’s needed to force us to be extra creative and do even better art.
“A work of art is good if it has sprung from necessity.” — Ranier Maria Rilke, Writer
So again it seems that creative people mustn’t forget their way forward despite their difficulties. There’s not time to whine, complain or despair about it all. Our job is to create. In fact, that’s where our salvation lives. It’s also a pretty good assignment to have once you step back and look at the alternatives.
“If it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants, art will be a meaningless recreation. If it blindly rejects that society, if the artist makes up his mind to take refuge in his dream, art will express nothing but a negation. In this way we shall have the production of entertainers or of formal grammarians, and in both cases this leads to an art cut off from living reality. For about a century we have been living in a society that is not even the society of money (gold can arouse carnal passions) but that of the abstract symbols of money. The society of merchants can be defined as a society in which things disappear in favor of signs. When a ruling class measures its fortunes, not by the acre of land or the ingot of gold, but by the number of figures corresponding ideally to a certain number of exchange operations, it thereby condemns itself to setting a certain kind of humbug at the center of its experience and its universe. A society founded on signs is, in its essence, an artificial society in which man’s carnal truth is handled as something artificial.” — Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays