One of the challenges of artistic practice is deciding how much of your workings to show, particularly during periods where most of your work is happening behind the scenes.
Most practitioners hope to make work that reveals something, whether that’s a particular truth about themselves (possibly hidden behind an anonymising artistic veneer), to put forward a viewpoint that others can respond to, maybe contribute to an ongoing discourse or, even better, provide an entirely novel perspective.
During the course of the last couple of years, as a pandemic and the relentless pace of profound events left us grasping for only the most important things, and where stability has at times felt impossible to achieve or maintain, it’s been hard to know where to look for insight and inspiration, and I’ve certainly found it really difficult to get into a creative headspace.
There’s something about the way we adapt to changing circumstances though isn’t there, that means eventually we’ll often find ways to survive and even thrive during the most turbulent periods, in the same way you’re able to tune out that piercingly loud alarm that initially shocked you out of your sleep. That capacity to adapt and become reconciled to changed circumstances continues to allow us all to live in this current time.
Reminds me of a song:
Things are changing, life is hard, blah blah like whatever! People get by…so what Justin?
Well, the crux of the challenge of artistic practice seems to me to be the ability to simply persist, despite the prevailing circumstances. To continue getting by. To remain committed to the act of creating, producing, thinking, re-examining, recombining, revising and revisiting. This imperative is paramount and independent of a desire for financial compensation or dreams of notoriety, and of course it’s almost impossible to achieve any of the latter without the former.
The most successful artists aren’t those who shine most brightly for a season of possibly majestic brilliance, but those who remain doggedly consistent amidst the turmoil that characterises the world in which we all live. Many (the majority?) of these artists will never be widely known, but they persist anyway. This singular passion sustains the artist even if alone it often, unfortunately, cannot put food on the table and belies the idea that artists are somehow less diligent than people in other disciplines. I’m arguing that persistence is an achievement in itself, especially now…and if you’ve been able to simply keep going in whatever way that means for you, then you deserve all the credit in the world. Much of that behind the scenes work may simply have been about survival, and that’s fine too.
If you’re an artistic practitioner and you’ve made it this far, well done! Take a moment to acknowledge your own success. Then keep going.
At the moment I’m working on a project that considers the benefits that can arise out of the most painful experiences. One of the questions I’ve been thinking about a lot during the research phase revolves around the artistic ethics of depicting terrible circumstances or events in a way that might be called ‘beautiful’ visually. Beauty is of course highly subjective, but should an artist seek to make work that tends towards their own conception of beauty, if the subject of the work is grim?
This question was prominent for me while watching ‘The Underground Railroad’ recently, the Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book. This series deals with the most horrific acts but looks truly breathtaking the entire time. At times the visual beauty of this work felt really jarring to me, but also forced me to think more deeply about the wider impact of what was being depicted. In this case I concluded that the photogenic visual canvas on which the events of this work were drawn actually served to further highlight the dark atrocity of the acts committed, by sheer contrast. I would however accept the counter argument that to construct such a visual feast somehow diminishes or glosses over the heinous nature of the crimes portrayed.
This video gives something of a taste of the look of the series:
Does the visual tone of this video feel congruent with a series about the horrific traumas of slavery? I’d be really interested to hear the reader’s reflections on this.
Certainly something to consider, but ultimately I guess the choice lies with each practitioner to strike that balance where they feel most comfortable, accepting that the viewer will be the ultimate judge of the success of your choices. It’s a tricky balance to strike for sure.
Another reflection is that sometimes striving for ‘beauty’ when depicting difficult or traumatic events might help to prevent the work sliding into a lazy or stereotypical portrayal. This is no bad thing either and possibly another justification for taking this approach. The history of visual art is littered with examples of practitioners who resorted to the most trite imagery to hammer home their point, often removing any sense of subtlety or nuance in the presentation of their (often) disadvantaged and disenfranchised subjects in the process. So maybe, producing something ‘beautiful’ offers a more layered presentation of your subject and offers the viewer the opportunity to consider that things might not be as straightforward as they first assumed. I don’t have the answers here…it’s just a thought.
Hopefully I’ll have more to share from the project I’m currently working on in the very near future. In the meantime, please accept my offering of this photo of some footprints. An indicator that we’re almost at the end of this particular journey.
And to close, another song to really hammer home today’s theme:
Till next time, keep persisting.