Never Call Yourself an Artist

In search of insights on creativity, I recently read Brian Eno’s 1995 diary, A Year with Swollen Appendices. Eno is a prolific artist, producer, writer, composer, and inventor of ambient music. In his diary, Eno chronicles his daily happenings during a year spent recording with the likes of  David Bowie, U2, JAMES, and other artists, juggling a busy family life in the midst of it all. What I find most insightful, however, is not the details of his daily activities, but the philosophical musings of a deeply creative, anthropological, conscientious producer. Does this seem high-flown? It shouldn’t. What distinguishes Eno’s ethos is the practicality, potency, and profundity of his approach to life and creative work. 

One thing above all stood out: his disdain for artistic egotism. “I’m finding myself increasingly coming to resent artists and their daft conceits,” Eno writes. For Eno, ego is the central force behind what makes art and artistry so vexing for both the artist and the audience. “Funny how people suddenly turn out crap when they decide they’re doing Art. Just as scientists allow themselves to torture rats ‘for Science’ … artists allow themselves to torture us ‘for Art.’” But why should creators not define themselves as artists, and their work as “art”? What could be so harmful about something so innocent? 

Simply put, when one strives to create something solely for the sake of personal glorification, without any deeper thought toward a greater purpose, meaning, or utility, it takes the form of obnoxious self-indulgence and trivial preoccupation. “Look at how clever and tortured I am,” says the artist. It’s a derivative, destructive narcissism. To begin by saying “I will make a piece of art” is essentially to say, “I will create something with no particular aims toward value, utility, or edification.” 

The problem today is that many have understandably come to conflate “art” with the giant displays taking up space downtown— hulking wastes of resources (and taxpayer funds) in service of some necessarily vague abstraction— pieces that are neither beautiful, nor useful, nor awe-inspiring, nor difficult to reproduce. At minimum, these pieces are intended to provoke (not thought, but revulsion). 

I’m reminded of the Pharaoh’s magi attempting to replicate Moses’ miracle in Exodus. There is a scene where Moses warns Pharaoh that if he will not do as God calls him to do, then Egypt will be visited by ten plagues of increasing severity until Pharaoh frees the Israelites from slavery. The plagues come– Moses and Aaron acting as conduits– and the magi, in an attempt to downplay the severity of the plagues by replicating, on a smaller scale, the appearance of polluted water and swarms of frogs, etc.; the idea being that it seems they can only further exacerbate this terrible situation, providing no relief through the demonstration of their powers.  

And so our shamans of today– our “artists” – can only replicate and reproduce what is already disgusting and base in the human spirit (pride), and seem to do it only to draw more attention to themselves. To produce the opposite effect– to beautify and imbue with greater value— would seem a miracle from God!

We need an audit of the entire social caste of so-called artists. One should not want to call oneself an artist, but an architect, a painter, an inventor, a dancer, a writer, or something else with greater specificity. To call oneself an artist is to suffer from a lack of focus and humility. 

Though we must not assign blame single-handedly to the artistic class for what is essentially an infiltration by non-artists— what we have found is that it is far more common and fashionable to be merely regarded as one who creates than to actually suffer through what is necessary to produce quality work. In Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, the Massolit society embodies this perfectly; a decadent society of publicly funded writers and propagandists, situated during the height of the Soviet Union, who enjoy social prestige and luxury at the cost of their freedom to write and say things that are actually true. To root out the fakers—those desiring the admiration due creatives, without any desire to suffer for the sake of their work— would drastically improve all cultural endeavors.

One particularly pernicious strategy the fakers use is to cling to a sort of relativistic philosophy and mystery in all that they do. In this philosophy, nothing can be said to be better or worse than any other thing– no work higher than any other work. The only thing that places one work above another is perhaps its willingness to uphold relativist philosophy. 

Critical theory, like that of Derrida, attempts to invert what has been understood as phallogocentrism– the derivation of meaning through masculinity, truth, logic, other such principles of ordering. The only safe narrative here would be that there are no objective narratives. “Who’s to say what is good, or beautiful, or true?” says the artist, terrified that their work should someday be properly evaluated. Writers in this camp cling to obscure language as a means of preservation, in order to avoid critique or coherence. If I don’t call out your work—or lack thereof—then you are less likely to call out mine. Mystery is the key component—as an “artist,” I mustn’t reveal my work’s meaning for fear it will be understood. Eno writes: 

“I’m not saying artists should have to ‘explain’ their work… but that there could and should be a comprehensible public discussion about what art does for us, what is being learned from it, what it might enable us to do or think or feel that we couldn’t before… The lack of a clear connection between all that creative activity and the intellectual life of the society leaves the whole project poorly understood, poorly supported, and poorly exploited. If we’re going to expect people to help fund the arts… then surely we owe them an attempt at an explanation of what value we think the arts might be to them.”

Now, I have no delusions about where Eno comes from, and that he probably wouldn’t like the context I’ve placed his words in. He is, after all, an artist; many parts of him might outright reject the conclusions I have alluded to. That doesn’t detract from the fact that he and I agree on our diagnoses of the problem. Let us not forget that to have such a decadent stance toward art– to regard it as both something very specific and valuable, as well as not necessarily anything in particular, devoid of telos– is a position of ultimate privilege. 

I am reminded of my time spent in the Houston punk rock scene. Kids with dyed hair, covered in tattoos, sporting Doc Martens, perfectly distressed jeans, a leather jacket with intentionally haphazard assortments of pins, all thoughtfully adorned in order to signify support of the social cause of the week (the social cause themselves some class of people sporting an even more meticulously tailored expression of their sacred Identity), sneaking out of their parent’s condos located in the Heights, telling a van full of friends to pick them up once they’ve walked several blocks down, to a part of town that looked rougher, realer, so as not to so obviously out themselves as a poser. 

Eno, throughout the work, offers what he calls “oblique strategies,” to help creatives burst through plateaus in the production of their work. I will leave you with my favorite oblique strategy:

“Take away as much mystery as possible. What is left?”