I can’t really find much of anything on the internet which addresses the ongoing conflict that I have with my purpose for making art and my personality, versus the extreme and desperate narcissism which art and artists seem to represent in modern times. The idea of art with a real spiritual function, versus an acquisition meant to enrich the buyer and put the artist on a pedestal.
And I can’t find any artist who relates to my “stop the presses, we can’t keep going like this” stance either. I have met exactly zero people like that – irl, or not.
Just as my views are out of step in general with a capitalist, narcissistic society, so they are with the value and purpose of art in society. There is no movement toward what I believe about this subject, and how I need to live my life so as not to feel totally empty by what the prevailing attitude here is regarding fulfillment. It just totally clashes with me.
In a society like this, the only thing for me is to work anonymously on behalf of a larger group and purpose. A group that works for the public. Anything I can create allows me to share information and beauty at the same time, bringing people together to feel related and not segregated in a country which at present, is so incredibly and dysfunctionally focused on navel-gazing.
I should probably put this in my statement, which I am due to revise again this year.
My art may be personal, but it is not meant to be interpreted just around me. In fact, I’d rather that it be a vessel shaped by me, but have the full potential to belong to anyone who relates to it and forgets about the beginning which started with me.
I can’t stand the cult of personality path.
Odilonvert 