Choosing to be an Artist
By jb_dances | November 2, 2007
What does the artist choose?
There are a number of fields of study from paleoanthropology to advertising demographics that all point to “artistic talent” being inherent in the human being for 100,000 years, with time devoted to development being the key issue separating the Dali from the scrapbooker. But exactly does it mean to “develop” as an artist. The concept of an aesthetic in that regard is secondary.
Here’s a key list for the artist in development:
1. Build the character of an artist. This is the most difficult of all. The marketplace drowns the artist in stories of a lack of character being associated with artistic gain. The confusion comes from associating boundary breaking, boundary analysis, and courage, most of all courage, summoned from deep within, to test boundaries for the sake of truth, the random dissolution, dissipation and “we all know” of thinking, acting, doing for the sake of testing, violating, destroying.
2. Believing not in self as perceived, but believing in the potential self, never losing sight of that potential, never being affected beyond what is necessary by the day to day, always recalling “keep your eye on the prize”–and doing the values clarification so that the prize is dependent on your gift, and your attitude about that gift, not the attitude of others.
3. The discipline to develop talent. Discipline is not rigorous. It is not based on denial, even when it requires isolation. It is not based on focus, even when focus is required. I deeply hold that discipline is the holding on to the sight of that which is most desired. Discipline derives from a word for “instruct”.
The question then becomes, who does the instructing? When we go back to the idea of talent or gift, the answer lies obvious and hidden: the potential self instructs, shows, theperceived self what is waiting on the other side of the next decision, the next brush stroke or chord. “Instructors” can provide short cuts derived from 100,000 years of art–a wood chisel is not a stone chisel, the brush was made to not touch the canvass, Manet did it this way, Monet did it that way. When those facts and crafts are absorbed and internalised, discipline then actually begins. The artist needs guidance, form and structure in which to finddiscipline. The artist who is “getting discipline” from himself or others is being destroyed. The artist who finds discipline with help from management, representation, or creative partner flourishes.
4. Seeing yourself as part of a community, and then finding and defending the community to which you wish to belong. There’s a line fromGroucho Marx that we can turn inside out: “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.” What clubs do does an artist belong to? Most ofthem are informal. Most of them are no more than who the artist “hangs out with”, coffees with, has over for movies, or fishes, hunts, goes clubbing (that most abstract and vicious type of hunting and fishing), or asks for advice, sympathy. The key definition: where you feel you belong. The shape and movement of those relationships will define the limits of artistic output and growth. I’ll be returning to this theme over and over. For now, a simple step is to distance yourself from relationships in which you are not valued for who you are, and what you are working to do. Arts communities are filled, from middle school band to the bars of Soho with people who confuse their inability to work through their struggles with artistic expression, taking us right back to #1–develop the character of an artist.
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A Place to Visit and Share.
By admin | October 22, 2007
At many places around the web there are rweferences to art and artists feratured by j&b dances.
We thougtht it was time to have a place that people could link to, to add to their own rss feeds, to make commets on and share their feelings and reactions to the ideas of ther artists. We are hoping fror some tranqulity, but some of this art id striking,,striking deep down, and we can understand if the response to it is hard to explain.
The main hope is to have a vibrant community from which more art will come.
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