William > I my subjective view, two things make the artist. One is art, as the article states. The other is some trauma that disabled the future artist to be fully comfortable with society and thus to be somewhat maladjusted -- an outsider to some degree. As the person matures, art becomes the way to try to renegotiate a place in society --- as an artist.
"Tears of a clown" kind of thing? It doesn't ring true as a universal or general truth (although, on a case by case basis, it might well apply to any individual artist). I don't think the premise is reliable, the outsider trying to find his or her place in society. How does that theory account for good artists who come from comfortable families and encounter little "trauma" in life? I believe what you describe is a myth popularized in the mid-nineteenth century, coming after a couple of generations of ever-increasing democratization of Western societies, the weakening of aristocratic and ecclesiastical ascendancy, and the widespread effects of industrialization--which included spreading literacy and general education. What happened in the nineteenth century was analogous to the effects of the Protestant Reformation: the repudiation of central authority (the Universal Church or l'Ecole des Beaux Arts), the assertion of private interpretation (of scripture or of aesthetics), the assault by outside knowledge on authority (Copernican and Galilean astronomy or the geological-Darwinian-Rutherfordian new knowledge). Social powers and authorities have always allowed a measure of behavior outside the bounds, from the Dionysian festivals to the court fool who speaks boldly to the monarch. These weren't artists, and the great works of the centuries weren't the products of outsiders and rogue creators. The inscrutable or irascible artist is the stereotype of popular twentieth century popular psychology and cultural anthropology. "I can do it any way I like" is more the manifesto of an aesthetic protestant than of a traumatized outsider. Side note: I've been fascinated for many years by the different preferences people have, preference of what they like to eat and wear, the ideas and stories they entertain, the work and diversions they choose. What is to account for the fact that one person chooses to learn and master an art and another person chooses clerical work and yet another chooses bookkeeping or driving trucks or being a salesman? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Michael Brady
