Great art
Many years ago it occurred to me that "all great art comes from suffering". Of the artist, that is.
I sometimes wonder whether it's true.
Last December I happened to see a TV special featuring a young singer-songwriter named Allison Crowe, of Nanaimo, B.C., here in Canada, whom I was completely blown away by and consequently looked into. (She played in Toronto recently and I ended up driving her and her bf and her manager to the venue, and following soundcheck going for dinner with them - sometimes it pays to be a fan.) As I write this I'm listening to a riveting song of hers entitled "Disease". Well, how can someone so seemingly normal and happy write such a dark song? On this particular live recording she even giggles like a little girl after she finishes playing it (she was probably around 20 at the time).
Maybe there's a tortured layer underneath. I detect a quality in her that I call "steel" - something like determination, but without any connotation of effort - and perhaps it takes some adversity to form that.
I'd be interested to hear readers' comments. Does all great art come from suffering?
13 Comments on "Great art":
She suffer's? Does it show in her art?
Perhaps the pain and suffering of great art is only one kind. Do not great joy and accomplishment also forge character? Great art from love, from ecstasy?
Or perhaps all of us encounter great suffering in life, and great joy, and some of us also produce great art after.
Fight bleakness! Oppose the pursuit of pain for the sake of art.
Responding to Anonymous: Part of her art is about suffering; whether she herself suffers is the interesting question here.
I should add that even if her art does come from suffering, my thesis is only about great art, not all art. So her situation can say anything about the validity of the thesis only if her art is considered great, which is a matter of individual opinion.
Carolyn's comment cuts to the heart of the matter. Imagine the best joyful gospel song ever written and performed. Is it great art or not? The thesis says no, that it can be excellent but not "great".
The thesis speculates about where great art comes from, but it doesn't define "great art". The definition I use is something that I think can be called art and that triggers a certain type of emotional response: something similar to awe is involved.
Can that kind of art be created by character that is forged by something other than suffering? That is the question.
Carolyn queried: "Does all great art come from suffering?" One'a them questions, eh? Makes one go all thoughtful and cross-eyed.
Right-off, there's a sense that yeah, more'n likely "great" hurts. What's great if one comes by it easily? Like, is finding a great meal in a dumpster even conceivable?
Yet the greatest things in life are free - and, hopefully, easy. Fresh air. Clean water. Sunshine playing on skin. Sure, these aren't ecologically "easy" - it's taken years in the billions for conditions to culminate in sunshine playing on (rather than annihilating) skin . Easy enough for us, though. We arrived in the nick of time. It's luck. Not dumb luck. Not blind luck. It's selective luck. Easy luck for us - since it wasn't us selecting. Nope. Some selecting's just natural that way.
Still, there's a (nagging) sense that great art hurts. Does it necessarily originate in suffering? Does it necessarily involve suffering? Possibly - but perhaps not necessarily. It hinges on what one means by "great art", no?
Seems pointless to define "great art" positively - we may mean different things by it. May be useful defining negatively, though. What's inconsistent with "great art".
Arguably, nothing which fails to alter (i.e., enrich, shatter, etc.) our perspective is great art. Having seen nothing like it does not (logically) suffice. Whatever else, great art (logically) must give us novel vision. It gives us new eyes to see with. We may have seen it a thousand times before - but with old eyes. If it's great art, we see it differently. We see it with new eyes. It gives us new eyes to see with. It gives us (novel) vision.
Whatever else, if so, "great art" (logically) requires the artist to have and convey to us (alternate from common) vision. To have and convey. And that's got'ta hurt. No two ways about that.
Time fleets from space. Shortly, then: to both have and convey (a different) vision hurts. Having different vision (like hearing voices) primarily makes for insanity. Whereas conveying (nevermind novelty) demands expertise and mastery of technique. The former is suited to unmoored unruled temperaments. The latter is suited to tethered obedient temperaments.
It hurts to be both. It's like living in the Shire with the One Ring burning a hole in one's gonads.
Typically, one goes where there be dragons - and returns. Goes and returns. Perhaps, if one survives, one returns with something from the dragon's hoard. Voila: Great Art.
Couple more thoughts on "great art".
Carolyn asked, "Does all great art come from suffering?" Rohan asked, "Can that kind of art be created by character that is forged by something other than suffering?"
Same question, right? Must geat art originate in suffering?
I think that, in the most general sense, this question is vital. Is anything truly worthwhile accomplished without pain and suffering? Do value and virtue demand our anguish? Does no truly good deed go unpunished?
Yeah, ok, that's stretching it - but not beyond reason. And all of us ask this at some (earlier than later) point. For damn good reason.
Anyhow - I didn't (even try to) answer that. My digressive answer was, more or less, "Well, dun'no if great art must originate in suffering - but for sure it involves suffering."
Must it originate in suffering, though? Dun'no. One hopes not. Yet, there's no evading suspicion that it must. Are we fallen creatures? If so, climbing up takes effort - and climbing to any great height takes great effort. Suffering.
Must it? Might we not climb to heights playfully? Joyfully?
Personally, I think we might. When one does what one wants to do, one doesn't necessarily suffer great effort. One may well seek (rather than suffer) it. It is passionate labouring for what one loves or values - however laborious.
If we know who we are and what we stand for then, presumably, we also climb where and when we want. But. If we allow ourselves to be rushed. If we're taught to fear heights. If we are and feel ridiculed. If we climb due to ambition that we ought to have made it at least that far already. A thousand and one ifs. Well, then we're not really doing what we want.
If we haven't yet settled who to be, if we don't know who we are, it's not likely we're doing what we want. More likely, we're doing what we're told we want. And, mostly, those that tell us what we want aren't our friends.
We're not doing what we want. We're working against ourselves. And that's laborious. That's suffering.
Doesn't matter if it's climbing to great heights or walking in the park.
Couple more thoughts on "great art".
Carolyn asked, "Does all great art come from suffering?" Rohan asked, "Can that kind of art be created by character that is forged by something other than suffering?"
Same question, right? Must geat art originate in suffering?
I think that, in the most general sense, this question is vital. Is anything truly worthwhile accomplished without pain and suffering? Do value and virtue demand our anguish? Does no truly good deed go unpunished?
Yeah, ok, that's stretching it - but not beyond reason. And all of us ask this at some (earlier than later) point. For damn good reason.
Anyhow - I didn't (even try to) answer that. My digressive answer was, more or less, "Well, dun'no if great art must originate in suffering - but for sure it involves suffering."
Must it originate in suffering, though? Dun'no. One hopes not. Yet, there's no evading suspicion that it must. Are we fallen creatures? If so, climbing up takes effort - and climbing to any great height takes great effort. Suffering.
Must it? Might we not climb to heights playfully? Joyfully?
Personally, I think we might. When one does what one wants to do, one doesn't necessarily suffer great effort. One may well seek (rather than suffer) it. It is passionate labouring for what one loves or values - however laborious.
If we know who we are and what we stand for then, presumably, we also climb where and when we want. But. If we allow ourselves to be rushed. If we're taught to fear heights. If we are and feel ridiculed. If we climb due to ambition that we ought to have made it at least that far already. A thousand and one ifs. Well, then we're not really doing what we want.
If we haven't yet settled who to be, if we don't know who we are, it's not likely we're doing what we want. More likely, we're doing what we're told we want. And, mostly, those that tell us what we want aren't our friends.
We're not doing what we want. We're working against ourselves. And that's laborious. That's suffering.
Doesn't matter if it's climbing to great heights or walking in the park.
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Does all great suffering come from art?
Suffering as multi-dimensional: one suffers by being forced to endure something; alternatively, one willingly martyrs oneself. According to some narratives, both the Romans and Iroquois admired and honoured martyrs for enduring torture and dying bravely: to them, suffering *was* a kind of art. Martyrdom, though, gets tiring after a while, and the lions (and arena crowds) seek new fare. What good is suffering if nobody is willing to pay attention? And if nobody pays attention, is it still art?
But one may also suffer in the sense of allowing something, of not interfering with it: sufferance, forbearance. In this sense, suffering is an orientation of openness, a willingness to let things unfold in their essence. And at this point the question of suffering becomes both more interesting and its connection to art more tenable.
Quasimodal characterised suffering in relation to the effort of climbing. One climbs. One climbs hurdles (internal and external), and by doing so one also builds. In climbing, in building, one is open both to creation and the activities of creating. In "Building Dwelling Thinking", the phenomenologist Martin Heidegger conceives building (in the most general sense) as an act of forbearance, an act of space-making: "To preserve the fourfold, to save the earth, to receive the sky, to await the divinities, to initiate mortals ... in this way, then, do genuine buildings give form to dwelling in its essence, and house this essential unfolding." That's one way of defining 'art'.
In "The Origin of the Work of Art", Heidegger defines art in relation to both the tasks of building and the undisclosedness of something revealed in its essence: "In the work of art the truth of an entity has set itself to work. "To set" means here: to bring to a stand. Some particular entity, a pair of peasant shoes [Heidegger is referring to several of Van Gogh's paintings], comes in the work to stand in the light of its being. The being of the being comes into the steadiness of its shining."
And interestingly enough, one doesn't have to be a Heideggerian to define art in terms of building, forbearance (the non-harming aspect of suffering), and being. In its essence, art *is* about being, and about letting be. The act of creation, of artificing, is integrally tied up with being: the archaic meaning of "art" is "being": thou art.
And so, if art is about suffering, or if all great art comes from suffering, or if all great suffering comes from art, it must be about more than the proximate activities: my art, my suffering (because in the end these reduce art to artifice, which undoes the suggestion that art may be about the genuine altering of perspective, the creation of something -- object or perspective -- that endures). We make both art and suffering meaningful when we consider them also as expressions of openness to the essences of beings and of Being.
Acceptance SpeechACCEPTANCE SPEECH BY ALBERT CAMUS TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, 1957, ON WINNING THE NOEBL PRIZEIn receiving the distinction with which your free Academy has so generously honoured me, my gratitude has been profound, particularly when I consider the extent to which this recompense has surpassed my personal merits. Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I. But I have not been able to learn of your decision without comparing its repercussions to what I really am. A man almost young, rich only in his doubts and with his work still in progress, accustomed to living in the solitude of work or in the retreats of friendship: how would he not feel a kind of panic at hearing the decree that transports him all of a sudden, alone and reduced to himself, to the centre of a glaring light? And with what feelings could he accept this honour at a time when other writers in Europe, among them the very greatest, are condemned to silence, and even at a time when the country of his birth is going through unending misery?
I felt that shock and inner turmoil. In order to regain peace I have had, in short, to come to terms with a too generous fortune. And since I cannot live up to it by merely resting on my achievement, I have found nothing to support me but what has supported me through all my life, even in the most contrary circumstances: the idea that I have of my art and of the role of the writer. Let me only tell you, in a spirit of gratitude and friendship, as simply as I can, what this idea is.
For myself, I cannot live without my art. But I have never placed it above everything. If, on the other hand, I need it, it is because it cannot be separated from my fellow men, and it allows me to live, such as I am, on one level with them. It is a means of stirring the greatest number of people by offering them a privileged picture of common joys and sufferings. It obliges the artist not to keep himself apart; it subjects him to the most humble and the most universal truth. And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from.
That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge. And if they have to take sides in this world, they can perhaps side only with that society in which, according to Nietzsche's great words, not the judge but the creator will rule, whether he be a worker or an intellectual.
By the same token, the writer's role is not free from difficult duties. By definition he cannot put himself today in the service of those who make history; he is at the service of those who suffer it. Otherwise, he will be alone and deprived of his art. Not all the armies of tyranny with their millions of men will free him from his isolation, even and particularly if he falls into step with them. But the silence of an unknown prisoner, abandoned to humiliations at the other end of the world, is enough to draw the writer out of his exile, at least whenever, in the midst of the privileges of freedom, he manages not to forget that silence, and to transmit it in order to make it resound by means of his art.
None of us is great enough for such a task. But in all circumstances of life, in obscurity or temporary fame, cast in the irons of tyranny or for a time free to express himself, the writer can win the heart of a living community that will justify him, on the one condition that he will accept to the limit of his abilities the two tasks that constitute the greatness of his craft: the service of truth and the service of liberty. Because his task is to unite the greatest possible number of people, his art must not compromise with lies and servitude which, wherever they rule, breed solitude. Whatever our personal weaknesses may be, the nobility of our craft will always be rooted in two commitments, difficult to maintain: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance to oppression.
For more than twenty years of an insane history, hopelessly lost like all the men of my generation in the convulsions of time, I have been supported by one thing: by the hidden feeling that to write today was an honour because this activity was a commitment - and a commitment not only to write. Specifically, in view of my powers and my state of being, it was a commitment to bear, together with all those who were living through the same history, the misery and the hope we shared.
These men, who were born at the beginning of the First World War, who were twenty when Hitler came to power and the first revolutionary trials were beginning, who were then confronted as a completion of their education with the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the world of concentration camps, a Europe of torture and prisons - these men must today rear their sons and create their works in a world threatened by nuclear destruction. Nobody, I think, can ask them to be optimists. And I even think that we should understand - without ceasing to fight it - the error of those who in an excess of despair have asserted their right to dishonour and have rushed into the nihilism of the era. But the fact remains that most of us, in my country and in Europe, have refused this nihilism and have engaged upon a quest for legitimacy. They have had to forge for themselves an art of living in times of catastrophe in order to be born a second time and to fight openly against the instinct of death at work in our history.
Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is perhaps even greater. It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself. Heir to a corrupt history, in which are mingled fallen revolutions, technology gone mad, dead gods, and worn-out ideologies, where mediocre powers can destroy all yet no longer know how to convince, where intelligence has debased itself to become the servant of hatred and oppression, this generation starting from its own negations has had to re-establish, both within and without, a little of that which constitutes the dignity of life and death.
In a world threatened by disintegration, in which our grand inquisitors run the risk of establishing forever the kingdom of death, it knows that it should, in an insane race against the clock, restore among the nations a peace that is not servitude, reconcile anew labour and culture, and remake with all men the Ark of the Covenant. It is not certain that this generation will ever be able to accomplish this immense task, but already it is rising everywhere in the world to the double challenge of truth and liberty and, if necessary, knows how to die for it without hate. Wherever it is found, it deserves to be saluted and encouraged, particularly where it is sacrificing itself. In any event, certain of your complete approval, it is to this generation that I should like to pass on the honour that you have just given me.
At the same time, after having outlined the nobility of the writer's craft, I should have put him in his proper place. He has no other claims but those which he shares with his comrades in arms: vulnerable but obstinate, unjust but impassioned for justice, doing his work without shame or pride in view of everybody, not ceasing to be divided between sorrow and beauty, and devoted finally to drawing from his double existence the creations that he obstinately tries to erect in the destructive movement of history.
Who after all this can expect from him complete solutions and high morals? Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road. What writer would from now on in good conscience dare set himself up as a preacher of virture? For myself, I must state once more that I am not of this kind. I have never been able to renounce the light, the pleasure of being, and the freedom in which I grew up. But although this nostalgia explains many of my errors and my faults, it has doubtless helped me toward a better understanding of my craft. It is helping me still to support unquestioningly all those silent men who sustain the life made for them in the world only through memory of the return of brief and free happiness.
Thus reduced to what I really am, to my limits and debts as well as to my difficult creed, I feel freer, in concluding, to comment upon the extent and the generosity of the honour you have just bestowed upon me, freer also to tell you that I would receive it as an homage rendered to all those who, sharing in the same fight, have not received any privilege, but have on the contrary known misery and persecution. It remains for me to thank you from the bottom of my heart and to make before you publicly, as a personal sign of my gratitude, the same and ancient promise of faithfulness which every true artist repeats to himself in silence every day.
Hmmm... Muse, if I understand her, is saying true art is about being. Or is it that art is about true being? Or is it being true? Maybe all of these...
And Anonymous posted Camus' Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Just curious.. did Camus get a Nobel Prize? Or was Camus commenting existentially on the virtues of existentialism? Anyhow, the substance of Camus' speech appears to be that true (contemporary) artists seek to save the world - i.e., keep it from destroying itself.
My position, if I understand it correctly, was that true art is about going it alone where no one else does - then coming back and putting together really nifty travel brochures.
I guess Carolyn must be right, then. Art's got'ta hurt. The artist seeks to be true while everyone's playing false. Then the artist attempts to save everyone (playing false) before either: everyone goes to hell in a hand basket; or, everyone playing false makes the artist give up on herself altogether - nevermind seeking to be true. Finally, the artist gives up on everyone else (playing false) and takes off. The artist goes it alone where no one else does. The artist sees visions. The artist hears voices. The artist returns. If she foams at the mouth, we throw sticks, stones and vegetables. If she puts together totally nifty travel brochures, she gets prizes.
Um, Quasimodal, it was actually I who asked the question of whether all great art comes from suffering. Carolyn had a more cheery outlook, asking the excellent question "Do not great joy and accomplishment also forge character?" - to which I would reply that yes, I agree, but that kind of character can't create great art.
(My focus on suffering might be partly due to my having originally been raised as a Buddhist. My thesis still stands, though.)
Sheesh.. mea culp-ability. I thought the original post was Carolyn's.
Now that puts a different spin on things.
You mention being raised Buddhist, Rohancat - and that it bears on what you mean by "great art".
Is the following a fair interpretation of what you mean?
Nothing truly good, reliable or permanent is found in the circumstances of the world. Therefore, living in the (unreliable) circumstances of the world is an inevitable pain.
The pain of living in the world eventually encourages seeking to transcend living in the world. And "great art" is an expression of that 'seeking to transcend' the world - while living in the world.
Would that be why you believe "geat art" comes from suffering?
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