THE ARTIST’S LIFE

What is an artist’s life?

What is an artist’s life like?

These questions sound the same, but the answers are different.

The differences depend on who is answering – artists, experts or the general public, not forgetting those who have never heard of the subject – and their memories and habits of use of the words in question.

Those who feel sympathy – or some ill-informed envy – towards the life of an artist will think of enthusiasm and anguish, passion and despair, geniuses and/or the damned, extraordinary things and ordinary things, great joys and small sorrows or vice versa, sunny afternoons, dark nights, so-so dawns.

Among people without good will, expressions such as “Well, aren’t you quite the artist!” reveal a view of the artist characterised by notions of idleness and cleverness, referring to the conviction that these are people who ‘don’t want to work’ and dedicate themselves to fun and carefree bohemia. ‘He’s got it all figured out – walks around like he’s some kind of artist.’

Regardless of whether one is living an artist’s life or explaining it, being an artist is neither simple nor easy.

The notion of an artist’s life is the result of the evolution of the social and economic framework of creative endeavours and the critical and philosophical reflections that have been dedicated to them.

To summarise expeditiously, we could say that in European history we went from medieval artisans and guilds to Renaissance artists – with lives told by Giorgio Vasari – and then from artists dependent on commissions from the rich and powerful to the artist who, at the end of the 19th century, finally free from the discipline of the Academy – according to the French model dissected by Pierre Bourdieu and Nathalie Heinich – handed over his destiny to the critics and the market. 

For a historical analysis of the process of constructing the ‘Image of the Artist’ as ‘legend, myth and magic’, see the book of the same name by Ernst Kris and Otto Kurz. For a very disenchanted view of the daily life of an artist today, see Kelly Reichardt’s film ‘Showing Up’ (2022).

The mythification of the figure of the artist, based on cases that are considered unique or exceptional from the outset – Raffaello, Leonardo, Michelangelo or, closer to us, Van Gogh, Dali, Picasso -, brings together around the notion of genius categories such as: demi-God (possessing a unique talent of divine origin), madman (misunderstood by society), saint and martyr (who sacrifices himself for his art and dies in misery).

The process of mythifying a few very rare artists has the effect of obscuring or rendering uninteresting to the general public the real lives of real artists, including those of the objects of mythification (see, with regard to Van Gogh, Heinich’s study and the films of Vincente Minnelli and Maurice Pialat).

A historical and sociological analysis makes it possible to understand how artists’ real lives depend on the economic and political logics of the societies in which they work, specifically the social structure that determines who their patrons and clients will be. Examples of moments of significant change are the birth of the modern bourgeois market – as an alternative to the authority of the religious powers or the Academies dependent on royal power – or, closer to home, the tendential divide in the 1960s between art aimed at the market and art aimed at museums, a distinction based on the prevailing type of funding. This brings us to the contemporary artist.

( Being an artist in the 21st century )

The most distinctive features of the 21st century art world are: a global nature, in terms of the trend of historical evolution; limitless diversification and growing inequality and hierarchisation in terms of production structures and economic scale; pluralism and relativism of legitimising discourses, increasing the difficulties of articulating and substantiating critical discourses and aesthetic theories with each passing day.

The insertion of the work of artists into social life as a whole takes the form of what we call a regime of generalised mediation in which an ever-increasing share of artists’ resources (time and money) has to be channelled into the mediation activities that precede (fundraising, mobilising and organising work teams) and follow (communication, dissemination, promotion, advertising, marketing) the production of the work itself.

Another consequence of this widespread mediation is that, more and more often, the work of artists is commented on, analysed, assessed and judged according to criteria and parameters that have more to do with current social, political or ideological issues than with the specific concrete characteristics of the work processes and the actual reality of the practices and works in question.

However, despite all the contemporary complexification of the modes of social integration of artists and works of art, the central founding core of the existence of the word art continues to be the work process of artists: what artists do.

The work process of artists in the 21st century, in addition to what it has in common with that of all those who have ever been called artists, has some specific distinctive characteristics.

Today, experimentation and innovation continue to be mottos, objectives or driving forces behind artistic work, but these notions – without wishing to go too far back in history – have a very different meaning and scope from what they had in the last decade of the 19th century, the 1920s or the 1960s.

It’s very common to hear that absolute originality is impossible (everything has already been done) and that innovation, even if only relative, is unlikely, given that today it coexists with an infinite diversity of other innovations, also relative, produced all over the world.

Experimentation, as well as being condemned to the same type of absolute relativisation (the paradox is deliberate), also always runs the risk of being considered gratuitous because, according to the most common commonplace, ‘it doesn’t bring anything new’.

As soon as the impossibility of absolute originality or innovation is postulated, all accusations automatically become legitimate and can be used to attack any contemporary artwork.

The solution to what seems to be an insurmountable contradiction is simple. It’s simply a matter of relativising the relativisation.

It wasn’t innovation and experimentation that went bankrupt.

What went bankrupt was a conception of history inherited from the 19th century – a caricature of Hegel poorly retreaded by Marx – based on the ideas of progress, overcoming, rupture and surpassing, associated with the ill-fated dialectic, in this case of the avant-garde, a companion on the road to teleological conceptions of history inspired by the belief in a unilinear evolution of humanity towards nobody knew what. It was these mystifications that failed.

Innovation and experimentation continue to exist (as they always have in real history) not in absolute terms, but as motivating and energising elements in the real work of real artists: within the framework of the social, cultural and artistic contexts in which they operate, and in the context of building the uniqueness of a path and the specificity of an authorial brand that the sequence of their work is shaping.

Eclecticism and transdisciplinarity have always existed, in different forms, throughout the history of the arts, but in the 21st century they have reached a diversity, depth and complexity that is more evident than in other periods.

In the current context it is not possible to circumscribe, not even in descriptive terms, the limits of the variety of work processes underway in artistic practices. Eclecticism.

Contrary to what happened in more dazzling historical moments with the avant-garde ideal, today the claim to originality (usually associated with the idea of innovation or experimentation) is not necessarily more pertinent than lines of work or research that extend, comment on or re-elaborate more traditional practices. Take the growing importance of the ideas of ‘archive’ and ‘inventory’.

Anachronisms, revivals and revisitations coexist on a common ground with new experiments and technological innovations.

In this panorama of generalised eclecticism, transdisciplinary artistic practices are becoming increasingly important, challenging the specialised discourses traditionally confined to artistic disciplines with clearly identifiable boundaries.

A film, a performance, a soundtrack or a series of phrases on a wall can all be works of visual art. Dance can be literature and video can be dance. Theatre can be non-text and text can be music. And everything can be silence or, on the contrary, just noise.

The word transdisciplinarity has become so common throughout the 21st century that it is advisable to clarify the scope and modalities of its use. 

Transdisciplinarity can refer to different types of working methods and practices. 

At a first level, transdisciplinarity would simply mean that an author works within the framework of several disciplines. This is something that can be found throughout the history of art with artists who have produced painting, sculpture, engraving, drawing and architecture.

Another level that is also common in historical terms is when an author who is predominantly active in one area also works in other areas. The painter who makes poems. The writer who draws pictures. The genius who does everything. 

What happens in these cases is that the disciplines remain separate, autonomous and it only happens that even if only one author dedicates himself to different disciplines and masters different working methods. 

The unprecedented situation that has become widespread in the 21st century is one in which an author integrates an articulated diversity of disciplines (previously considered distinct and autonomous) into the genetic logic of his work, as much as into the daily production process and the final appearance of his works. 

There is also another type of transdisciplinarity that has been gaining prominence, going beyond the articulations between artistic disciplines and involving the inclusion in artistic practices of other types of practices and knowledge from, for example, the fields of social studies, civic and political activism or scientific and technological research

(for example, in the field of ecology).

It is also important to consider the institutional dimension of the practical issues raised by the expansion of transdisciplinary artistic practices, with regard to career management and the ways in which works are presented and audiences called upon.

Despite the generalisation of transdisciplinary working practices, markets and institutional promotion structures remain separate and differentiated.

Will a choreographer who makes a film present it on stage, at a dance festival or in a cinema? If he decides to write and/or read a text, should he do a show or a conference? Or a book?

This is a new and exciting tension induced by transdisciplinarity: the tension between the heterogeneity of work processes and the single-mindedness of the main institutional mechanisms for dissemination, promotion and commercialisation.

Similarly, for artistic works that are articulated with areas of research or social action that are not specifically artistic, the question arises of how best to present and publicise these works. On stage, in the cinema, in a museum, in a library, at a street event?

( Eternal Condemnation )

Man is condemned to be free. It’s a thesis associated with existentialist philosophy. It has the advantages and disadvantages of appearing to be both a postulate and a conclusion.

Human beings are forced to choose, however few the options may be.

Freedom is an obligation and this circumstance generates enormous potential joy – not to mention hope – if only the immense joy of being free. Potential joy is inseparable from potential anguish, the intensity of which varies according to the circumstances and personality of each person – the anguish of choice. 

Assuming that all human beings are condemned to be free, it could be said that some are more condemned than others to be freer than others.

The big break – almost always fraught with danger – went to the artists.

Society prescribes a set of defined obligations for most professions – there is consensus on what is expected of a carpenter, welder, cook, doctor, engineer, lawyer, etc. – associated with stable criteria for assessing competences and results.

Artists are obliged to do what they want.

It could be said that society has decided to amuse itself – perhaps to alleviate boredom, exhaustion or bad conscience – by granting a group of people the right to do whatever they want on condition that they invent whatever they want to do.

Nobody can tell the artist what to do – if they did, they wouldn’t be considered an artist – and the artist never knows what the evaluation of what they do will be.

The artist only has ontological security – he is what he is, he is an artist – and only if he can assume it, feel it, maintain it and nurture it.

One artist, when telling me that I should get to know the work of another younger artist, added: ‘We don’t know what he’s going to do in the future, you may like it or not, but I’m sure he’ll continue to be an artist’.

Sometimes this certainty isn’t so obvious to the young artist himself. If we want to dramatise it, we can say that there is a great moment when someone decides, accepts or acknowledges that they are, already are, always have been or will be an artist, perhaps forever. A moment that is often repeated every time they wake up and ask themselves ‘what am I going to do today’, every time they ask themselves before falling asleep ‘what have I done today’. The artist can’t answer anything. Because there’s nothing that can’t be work for the artist.

What is the artist’s working process like?

Lawrence Weiner used to give very simple advice to young artists: ‘Just make sure you get the work done and go to the opening’.

Easier said than done. The artist’s working process is, by definition, permanent, open and insecure.

Permanent because, I repeat, for the artist there is nothing that cannot be work. The logic and dynamics of the work mobilise everything that has been their experience in the past and everything that will be their imagination of the future.

The artist’s work process is open-ended because it is never finished. As soon as conviction or circumstances lead to a work being declared finished, the need or impulse for another work to deal with what was missing, what wasn’t finished after all, anything else that can no longer be forgotten and there is always so much missing. The struggle continues.

It’s an insecure job because you never know what people are going to say, how they’re going to react. You don’t even know what you’re going to think or not think when you look at the work again from another distance, from another perspective. Wherever he looks, the wind will keep pushing him, he doesn’t know where.

The personal and social structures that support the work of artists are fragile, not so much because of the variations in opinion games, but because of the contingency and transience of everything that surrounds and accompanies us. 

It’s not so much that we don’t know the way, it’s that the way dies. 

(Spending and saving)

The greatness of the moments when someone decides to be or remain an artist is not just heroic. In some cases it’s an inevitability: ‘I always knew I was going to be an artist’, ‘I never thought I could be anything else’.

An experienced artist used to say to his young students: ‘You should only be an artist if you can’t help it’.

For many people, the most intense mark of the decision is anguish, the feeling sometimes considered inseparable from freedom.

The way we deal with freedom, decision, anguish, fear, courage, shapes the lives of all of us and also the careers of the artists we know and those we don’t, those who didn’t make it or gave up trying to be or remain artists. As always, neither we nor they know what we’ve lost.

We’ve gone from the abstract question of what an artist’s life is to the concrete question of what an artist’s life is like.

An artist’s life makes you think of monthends, funding, competitions, complaints, materials, studios, difficulties, hassles, flashbacks, methods, processes, collaborations, work, more work.

The problem for the artist is that most people think that the work and life of artists is – compared to the real work of those who actually work, i.e. those who aren’t artists – something as abstract, playful and speculative as conversations about the definition of art and artist.

As marvellous as the idea of leading an artist’s life may be, the truth is that in their day-to-day real lives artists also need to make a living.

Making a living, whether as an artist or not, poses specific, unpleasant problems that are not abstract.

The question of the social and professional situation of artists intersects with legal and institutional issues, cultural policies and politics in general, referring to such prosaic things as professional associations, legislation, social security, minimum subsistence income, precariousness, etc.

In terms of political doctrine, the positions are distributed along an arc where at one end there is an understanding of art as a public service that should be managed and financed by the state and at the other end there is a refusal of any state action in the arts, leaving it to the mechanisms of the market economy. If there are people who want to pay, there will be art; if there aren’t, there won’t be.

If artists are considered to provide a public service – like doctors, teachers, magistrates, police officers, military personnel, etc. in the service of the state – and bearing in mind that budgetary resources are always limited, there are problems with the criteria for choosing candidates for artist status and the hierarchisation of their remuneration and funding.

In countries that aren’t marked by centuries of cultural and artistic underdevelopment – as is the case in Portugal – there is an informal consensus regarding a combination of the two models.

The market or private demand is strong enough to make a significant part of artistic activity work on its own due to a deep-rooted historical experience of prestigious institutions, collecting, patronage, etc.

The population’s level of education and cultural information means that it recognises the advantages of investing public money in artistic activities, allowing the state to allocate financial resources to them without running the risk of being accused of squandering taxpayers’ money on superfluous activities.

An enlightened state and a well-educated public know why artists are necessary and useful, all the more so when their excellence and diversity are supported and stimulated.

The space of freedom and the little money that society grants them is reciprocated in the form of the widening of imaginative possibilities and the enrichment of emotional and intellectual experiences inherent in living with the products of the work of artists.

The struggle continues.

Alexandre Melo