(via debauchette's tumblr)If you think art is good and masturbation is bad, you will most likely deny that there is truth in this tagger's analogy.
If you think art is bad and masturbation is bad, you will most likely agree that there is truth in the analogy.
If you think art is bad but masturbation is good, you will most likely deny that there is truth in the analogy.
If you think art is good and masturbation is good, you may or may not agree that there is truth in the analogy, depending on whether or not you have experienced or witnessed artful masturbation. But you would be duly challenged to argue that the creation (and, often, the consumption) of art is NOT masturbatory.
If you think both art and masturbation are good and concur with the tagger's correlative, you might wonder why someone felt the need to state something so obvious.
6 comments:
The tagger, taken at his word, is saying something like the following: "Art has no use, purpose, or value beyond the self-fulfillment of the artist." However, this statement is demonstrably and obviously false, so I'm just going to go ahead and dismiss it entirely.
Now then, only a tenous connection remains: art is something that people do for themselves to make themselves feel good. Pretend none of that statement needs qualification, and yeah, I guess that makes art kinda like masturbation--but only if you have absolutely no sense of nuance. Unless the tagger wants to go so far as to decry the very notion of pleasure, this is a pointless comparison.
Nevertheless, here are three important points of distinction between the two:
1. The creation of art is just that--a process of creation.
2. Art often requires significant discipline, dedication, or labor.
3. Art can be experienced by (and therefore can influence) others.
Sure, art can be masturbatory, but so can lots of other things, such as driving, lecturing, and eating. None are categorically masturbatory.
Also: I feel guilty for immediately thinking "Banksy" whenever I see any graffiti in this style; it's something of a genericized trademark in my brain. But hey, for all I know, it actually is by him; I don't know where she lives or where she saw this.
It's on Elizabeth Street in NYC, she says.
Now, while part of me very much wants to dismiss the statement (it IS hopelessly glib and reductive, after all-- which is kinda what I was after in this post-- in that it's so minimal that there is room for several interpretations), most of my cute romantic notions about the creative process being something above and beyond masturbation-- some transcendent and relational and fulfilling for both audience and creator-- has kinda been burned out of me.
I've got an undergrad degree in studio (visual) art and an MFA in poetry. I want to go get another degree so that I might write smarter critical things about yet another art form-- film. Obviously, I want very much to believe Art (yes, capitalized) is a valid and worthwhile undertaking.
But I have my own paintings (that I think aren't half bad) on my walls in my apartment and few people even notice them. And I have a book of poems I wrote sitting on my hard drive-- and bound on my bookshelf. I don't think anyone's read them in over 2 years. (Yes, if I were so inclined, I could push them out into the world on wobbly knock-knees but my ego's not at a point at which it could withstand the rejection just yet.)
And, what, 4? 5? people read this blog?
I've been working pretty seriously on my own modest artistic/creative contributions since I was about 15. And guess what? Not too many people really care what I've made/written/painted/sculpted/designed.
Most days, masturbation is exactly what creative work feels like. A simple and insular release.
How cynical is that?
Well, ultimately, I guess where I land with regard to this tag is at the station at which I admit that even if your points about the gaping holes in the analogy are well taken, art sure does FEEL masturbatory more often than not.
And like masturbation, the creation thereof can also feel compulsive.
It's not like I could stop, even if I really wanted to... even if I'd wholly convinced myself that the work is a waste of time.
Do you see?
"Insular," sure, but this is a good thing. Validation is nice, but it can't be an end in itself. Self-expression can't be anything but self-indulgent, even if you have communicative goals in mind. Alone on an island, I would continue to create, and most certainly wouldn't feel it was a waste of my time. Here or there, the creation was for me in the first place! 'Course, I've also never had professional aspirations...
So much for "insular." "Simple," though? Simple like masturbation is simple? Unless you're throwing paint at a canvas and saying, "Whee, this is fun," you can't be that jaded. Even things that might fall into this category (doodling, let's say) are really more practicing art than actually doing it.
If you care about it, art is hard. It's not casual and it's not roses from start to finish. If this matches your masturbation, I think you're doing something wrong. Similarly, if "creating art" meant running around with a piece of chalk, scribbling whatever popped into your head, then yes, I would say that is like masturbation.
But, we know Art is something altogether different. We create symbols and imbue them with aesthetics. Plenty of other animals can masturbate, but they cannot do this. It doesn't have to be some magnum opus, or even particularly good, to retain this profundity.
It's just "what we do," and everyone does it to some extent. So when someone thinks they're being clever and scribbles on a wall, "Hey, this thing you put here, yeah, well, it doesn't mean shit, because all you're doing is spewing your mental ejaculate all over my public space, so fuck off with your precious 'meaning'"--well, the ignorance is enough to make me wax critical.
I think what all this means is that you need to grab some paint and stencil board and throw up both prose and pictures around the city.
Alex, you're being a pain in the ass. You DO realize we're not debating opposing sides here, right? I mean, I'm coming at the metaphor a slightly more angular trajectory than you are, but it's not like I'm not acknowledging all the ways in which it falls short. As I said, it's clear that the tag is glib, indeed. As far as artistic manifestos go, there's not much that can get said in three words.
Though I don't really feel much like debating just for the sake of debating, I will say this about your above comment:
yes, the creation of art can be hard.
However.
In my experience, it's really only hard when you're sucking at it.
When you're in a groove and making art that you think is onto something, it comes out of you all smooth and dewy-wet. With very little pain. And it's even FUN.
Really, that's why I stopped writing poems and began writing more essayistic stuff-- the poems were getting hung up on my innards and felt thorny coming out. In essence, I lost the joy that I'd once felt in writing them-- the joy that I still feel when I write other stuff.
So, again, my own personal experience tells me that the notion that "making art is NECESSARILY a struggle" is kinda bullshit. And it's a very baroque idea, too. When it's good, it really IS easy. And, I can pretty much guarantee that anything that isn't coming with ease is gonna suck.
But, that could be just me. I'll certainly allow that I'm describing nothing beyond my own personal, idiosyncratic creative process here.
And like I said, I don't really think we're arguing oppositionally here. The only thing is that I resist the idea that there is romance to be found in a practice of tortuous artistic production. I'm not frickin' Byron. And as such, I tend to think that that notion gives undue import to a fairly silly concept of artist-as-long-suffering-hero.
Bleck. I'm just a person, living a mundane life, who happens to be driven towards creation-- as is pretty much every other person living a mundane life. And actually, my life is one of fairly exceptional privilege, all things considered. I just don't feel right at all about taking ownership over some kind of suffering for the sake of my art (beyond my dispositional insomnia and the frequent emotional funks that come from feeling like I suck more often than not-- and those hardly count as anything beyond manifestions of (also mundane) neurosis).
So, you l'il debate-fiend, quit pickin' at me! We ain't disagreeing!
Yes, I was incorrect, and didn't mean to romanticize the idea of the "suffering artist." I agree that creation can be an flowing, almost effortless process (with the caveat that it still usually takes a lot of practice to get to the stage where this is possible).
But if I'm being a pain in the ass, it's only because glib, dismissive generalizations grate so strongly on my nerves. "Politics is bullshit (so I don't have to think about it)." "Everyone is racist (so I don't have to think about it)." Etc.
I don't think that everyone needs to be super-serious all the time, and this post was perhaps not the place for me to strangle the essence out of a phrase just because you weren't taking it as seriously as I. It's not that I was trying to debate just for the hell of it, I was just responding more to an imagined opponent than your post.
I know.
But it's my blog, so sometimes I get to use it to call people out for being particularly enthusiastic argument-makers and/or stance-havers.
It's fun. Not quite a hobby, but getting there.
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