Chapter 4 of potential hindrances to our creative development continued…
{**00IV: The best creations are made with great skill and labour and time AND entirely by the artist (without cheating)**}
In the last 3 features of this chapter, I attempted to uncover a view of skill, labour, and time that goes beyond the platitude of no pain, no gain. Another perspective to consider, however, is that many an artist/creator in a variety of fields would be eager to tell you all about their toil or 10,000+ hours etc. —— and it’s not like they’d be lying.
Edward Ruscha. OOF. 1962 (reworked 1963). Saw this kid loving this at the MoMA back in 2012.
You are probably aware of the assumption (or recall from Chapter 2) that artists are gifted and, therefore, don’t need to really work for what they do or have. American artist, Ed Ruscha, once said, “That’s me. The twenty-five year overnight sensation.” This is partly why artists are frequently asked to work for free. Sometimes this can feel like: Art is a good time and a gift so we should give it away (and then go starve in the streets).
If it sounds like I am contradicting what I wrote in the last two posts, this is due to my ongoing attempts to bring to light a spectrum that points to the boundless nature of the creative impulse and source; a spectrum that tends to present polarity. In the process of researching what artists have to say on any subject such as process, time, skill, originality, when a work is finished etc., you’ll find many of their responses appear to be in total opposition or contradiction.
Take, for example, American photographer Nan Golden who has said that it’s all in the editing process: “You take a thousand pictures to get a good one, like oysters with a rare pearl…it’s a lot to do with generosity, just taking thousands and thousands of pictures, and then where the art comes in is the editing.”
Nan Goldin, Trixie on the cot, New York City 1979 from The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (Aperture 2012)© Nan Goldin
This may sound like a goal of perfecting something technical but Golden has also said, “My work became repetitive at school. I was expected to replicate my work with the drag queens, but with more technical proficiency. My work lost its immediacy.”
[…]
“It can never be perfect. Next week I am putting it on video for the first time. It will then exist outside of my control. But this is not the final version. I will continue to re-edit it. It’s my ‘Leaves of Grass’, constantly updated and revised.”
For Golden, the mass accumulation and editing is a path to her creative source. Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young, on the other hand, believes that editing takes him away from it:
“I always talk about capturing the first ever good take on a song I record. I strive to capture songs in one take if possible, maybe two if I mess up bad. I call this keeping the feeling of a song and find the more I rehearse the more the feeling is lost, so I stopped rehearsing.”
[…]
“Well you know if you know what you’re doing when you go in, there’s no sense in doing it over and over again because you’re only going to get worse…..you’re not going to get better I mean that’s the way I am….maybe some people think they get better when they do something over and over and over but they get technically better and spiritually farther from the source….so I feel much better being close to the source of the vibe of the song and I don’t care about the technical part of it”
[…]
“It’s like Schubert said ‘I don’t make up my music, I remember it, I remember what
I’m doing’…..the only responsibility is to take care of it…make sure you’re in good enough shape to deliver it and make sure that you know what you’re doing enough that you care about the moment you do it. The whole thing for me is timing…there’s a window to perform you perform in that window, if you don’t you’re gonna screw up….you can fight it but it’s not gonna work…it’s not a window that a manager or a record company puts on you…it’s not a window an audience says now it’s time to do this….it’s a window you Feel and you do what you can in that time.”
Now maybe you can’t stand Neil Young. I know at least one person who firmly believes that he should practice more because the man can’t sing. Neil Young knows this too: “But I know I can’t sing, OK? That’s OK. But it really doesn’t matter. I’m around the note somewhere. I‘m near it. I know it; it knows me.” Young is choosing not to craft his voice because clarity comes through the immediacy of his impulse. His music is still enjoyed by many because the living essence is there to connect to.
Whether we hustle or coast, hone or lack supreme skill, use subjective or linear time —— trusting what feels right to us is the right way. There are many paths and directions. So what if we get the gist of our own personal relationship with skill, labour and time and are inspired to make something that feels like cheating? What does cheating have to do with creative potential?
Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large.
I contain multitudes.
WALT WHITMAN
[**Title image: Yoko Ono, This Line Is a Part of Very Large Circle, 1966]
*Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. I do my best to track down original sources. All rights and credits reserved to respective owner(s). Email me for credits/removal.