Celebrity culture has always made no sense to me.
There’s a political/moral argument to be made for why nobody should take celebrities seriously; it goes like this: if you believe in equality, you ought to recognize that celebrities are just regular people who are maybe more talented or creative and in the right place at the right time. But, in that case, what we admire is what they do primarily, as it flows from who they are to whatever degree. There’s a good chance that what they are is nasty – because that’s easy to hide from the fans, and people change, and maybe they have moods like the rest of us. If you’re not egalitarian, then you’re left believing there is something super special about certain people – including all their warts.
I learned this early from Bob Dylan. Not because Dylan’s a friend of mine, or anything, but I remember his amazing interviews with the San Francisco press, when he was first becoming famous. The press were trying to access his celebrity, but Dylan was trying (as it appeared to me) to get them to come to grips with who he was. They were trying to interview a celebrity, and Dylan was being a musician. He wanted his music to speak for him; they wanted to know what kind of cigarettes he liked. It was a crucial lesson in the vacuity of celebrity culture and I never have forgotten it. Dylan is rightly famous for his music and song-writing, and everyone who was trying to come to grips with him on any other axis was just being a shallow fool. I believe that’s a fairly common experience for some celebrities – they want to keep things real, and thoughtless fans and media simply want to wrap themselves in iconography.
Youtube and instagram and (formerly) MTV celebrity culture feast on vacuous iconography and marketing spin. There’s a creative reality behind it: some of the objects of attention are super-talented artists but some are not: the Monkees and Milli Vanilli, Vanilla Ice, and Nickleback come to mind. Celebrity culture builds them up as a puffed up what they are that conceals their reality. Somewhere in the celebrity framework is religion and politics – some celebrity politicians have a great difference between what they are and what they appear to be. I’d say that the degree to which a person is pure celebrity (as opposed to a talented creative individual) depends on the degree of difference.
There’s something about some people that appears to prep them to be followers, rather than creative in their own right. I don’t spare any respect for a rabid Bob Dylan fan, who just wants to be in his presence, but I’m thrilled to sing along with any amateur guitar player who wants to play One More Cup of Coffee around a camp-fire. I don’t understand the people who fall for the glamour of celebrity rather than the actions of the celebrity for which they are celebrated. The first question the journalist asks Dylan is “what poets do you dig?” Apparently too ignorant about the celebrity to know that he renamed himself after poet Dylan Thomas; perhaps that is an answer.
I was listening to the Diamonds In The Sky episode of the Snap Judgement podcast [sj] which is a harrowing description of how a bunch of journalists and hangers-on were invited to tour with Rihanna on a private 777. It became a sort of mini-Fyre festival: they were expected to sleep on the plane, everything and everyone was always late, and Rihanna spent her limited amounts of free time hanging out with her A-list celebrity friends, and the journalists only got to see her on two quick walk-throughs. Naturally, they were unhappy, but they were afraid to voice it because they were afraid they would lose future access to the great star. So they drank themselves into a stupor and waited for it all to end. It’s a fascinating episode because you can really feel the pain of these people, who were trapped in a situation where they had to confront their ideal of the star, and the reality of the star. Rihanna’s very pretty and talented and rich, without a doubt, but one thing that is also completely obvious is that she hasn’t got any time for a bunch of star-struck millenials who think they’re journalists.
For the record: these are my aesthetic judgements. This is all my opinion; I’m sure there are people out there who think Rhianna is awesome, and others who don’t. I have a strong aesthetic that performing artists should not be over-produced, over-stage-managed, theatrical fakes. Everyone who has ever known a musician knows that they’re mostly struggling to get paid, and it’s a dream to be a famous celebrity like Rihanna, so – more power to her. But I personally draw a distinction between the public face and the reality. I couldn’t name a song by Rihanna if you put a gun to my head, but I’ve seen loads of pictures of her getting in and out of expensive cars. Perhaps that’s her art-form.
From the few minutes when Rihanna went back into the passenger section for a mandatory photo-op
At around 30:00min into the podcast, the interview becomes about the journalists’ reactions to confronting the reality of the difference between the celebrity and the person. They realized that they never met the person; all they were left grappling with was the puffery and augmented glamour reality. The overall take-away seemed to be that none of them felt they could tell about what a shitty scam was pulled on them, because they were afraid that, if they ever did meet Rhianna, she’d not talk to them. What an abusive relationship; what kind of submission is required to be a journalist?
I came back with more of an obsession with Rihanna, which I didn’t expect at all. I thought I’d have enough self-possession and dignity to hate her afterwards, but that was false.
If one of your ordinary friends treated you that way, would you tolerate it?
This is more of the voluntary human servitude that De Boétie writes about [bd] – the same mechanism is in play, here, as when the royalty of ${wherever} dress up in expensive stuff that they took from the people, and prance around – and everyone smiles and cheers.
To achieve the good that they desire, the bold do not fear danger; the intelligent do not refuse to undergo suffering. It is the stupid and cowardly who are neither able to endure hardship nor to vindicate their rights; they stop at merely longing for them and lose through timidity the valor roused by the effort to claim their rights, although the desire to enjoy them still remains as part of their nature. A longing common to both the wise and the foolish, to brave men and to cowards, is this longing for all those things which, when acquired, would make them happy and contented.
It seems to me that that’s the essence of star-power, as well. Shorn of the glamour, are they still talented and interesting? Or, were they talented and interesting once upon a time, before they were suborned into the corporate profit-making machinery? The greatest of the stars are the ones that “sell out” big at the height of their game, and build a massive production company around themselves, that ensnares and enraptures the members of their audience who long for something. What I find sad is that those members of the audience don’t see that the star has probably moved far from what justified their stardom in the first place. I continue to see Bob Dylan as a complex sort of counter-example: he’s got amazing star-power but he’s been on the road delivering masterpieces more or less constantly since he was a kid. He’s undeniably good, and never rested his reputation on kissing the media’s ass, or had a make-up line.
As I’m writing this, I’ve been watching The Boys, which also has some pointed by-play about the relationship between celebrity and reality: the superheroes are cynical, violent, fakes – except for the ones that really are super-powered and psychopathic. In a time when we live with a fake star in the US White House, it’s a bit heartening to see that there are some people willing to subliminally explore the interplay between star glamour and the reality of being a star.
To me, venerating big stars for their stardom is like venerating a bottle of ketchup for the beauty of its label. Worse, it’s participating in a sort of ritual sacrifice of the artist, in which they are exposed and eventually destroyed for the gratification of their fans.
None of this should be construed as criticism of Rihanna. She’s done her thing and she’s good at it. I have done speaking tours which were far more low-key and easier than the kind of performances she’s putting on, and I can’t even imagine how tiring it must be for her to make the nightly performance of being herself. I wonder whether, sometimes, she wants to take off her mask and be whatever’s behind it, or has she grown into that mask so thoroughly that all there is, is emptiness?
I hate the degree to which marketing has made everything it touches fake. Why can’t they sell what’s good and real? Please don’t tell me there’s not enough good, real, stuff to go around.
Celebrity life takes people in and chews them up and spits them out. I’m sure that someone like Dylan, who has toured all his life, has developed a very strong inner core of his sense of self; we see that sometimes in flashes that – I have to admit – appear as moments of him hating his audience. But how can someone sit there and get brain-addled over, let’s say Britney Spears, and know that her star-life is going to make her crash and burn, and then they shift their attention to the next one? It’s a fucking cruel grand guignol spectacle, is what it is. As Ray Wylie Hubbard (who has been touring for a long time, too) says, “Rock and Roll is a vicious game.”
[Verse 4]
So now it’s tattoos and piercin’s and leathers and groupies
And managers, and agents, lawyers, publicists and chauffers
And the party’s never gonna end as far as anyone can see
And then a friendly stranger shows up and says, “The first one’s free”[Chorus]
Rock-N-Roll is a vicious game
Rock-N-Roll is a vicious game[Verse 5]
And now the band has become the darlin’s of the media – they’re all the rage
And there’s hysteria and public appearances and fistfights backstage
Ah, it seems the gods have smiled upon the band and have embraced them hell-bent
So now it’s carte blanche, ’cause money talks even in hell[Verse 6]
And then comes E.R.s and stomach pumps and machines that kickstart the heart
And the band breaks up and the bass player O.D.s as the album reaches number one on the Billboard charts
I don’t care about celebrities because they are strangers to me. Some celebrity painter made a beautiful artwork that I love? Great. I will enjoy the artwork, but I just don’t really care about the person who made said artwork—after all, I do not know this artist. I just don’t care about some celebrity’s personal life or biography. I won’t care about somebody as a person and I will have no interest in their private life until we become friends and we get to know each other.
Thus I’m only interested in the work some celebrity is producing. If my favorite artist wrote a book in which they explain how they make their art, I’d want to read said book. If the same artist wrote their autobiography, I wouldn’t care.
I’m also interested in listening what some celebrity has to say only when it comes to their area of expertise. The fact that someone is a great artist doesn’t mean that their opinions about science or politics are worth listening to. The same goes for their fashion preferences or favorite consumable goods.
I like this attitude, wanting your art to speak for you is cool.
Good and real? When it comes to music, I know a bunch of people who make pretty good music and love what they are doing. The problem is that very few people have heard about them, even fewer pay for their music, so these musicians need to do other “real jobs” in order to pay their daily bills.
Incidentally, I work as an artist and I’d like to think of my art as good and real. Figuring out how to market my work and how to find paying clients is a continuous pain for me. Apparently I have no talent at promoting myself.
Fundamentally: Because it’s easier to sell crap than it is to make something good.
Making a product people actually want is hard work, you know. Much easier to just con them into buying whatever mass-produced bullshit you can easily ship out.
I’ve never understood the hate for Nickelback. Anyone enlighten me?
Whenever I hear stories like this, I think of a bunch of ancient Greeks sitting around a fire, and one of them is saying, “Hephaestus built this amazing metal statue that came to life, but while he was doing it, Ares was totally sleeping with his wife.” There is something very primal about our desire to build up gods and then knock them down.
Know where Wyatt Earp spent his declining years? Hollywood, trying to get someone to tell his story and make him the hero he never was.
Welcome to The Society of the Spectacle.
sonofrojblake@#3:
I think they’re mostly derivative well-marketed music that’s aimed at the charts – i.e.: it is not real and it’s trying too hard to sound real. I might change that view if I knew the band and discovered that they are really sincere and that they hate marketing as much as I do… They are not talentless – most of the well-produced well-promoted acts are quite good (although there are also the ones that autotune too much…) I just doubt the music is coming from a real place, which makes it impossible for me to make an emotional connection to it.
Stuff like “emotional connection” and “keeping it real” is all very squishy and that’s why I seldom post about art other than my own in this blog; I don’t know any way to get around the fact that our response to music (all art?) is a matter of opinion.
So I feel like Nickelback is fake, but I’m open to being convinced it’s not, but in the meantime I’ll listen to Ray Wylie Hubbard (who I do know personally to a small degree) because I have no doubt I know where his music is coming from and the sacrifices he’s made to make it.
LykeX @#2
Not exactly. The problem is that consumers either cannot afford to buy quality goods or they don’t care about the difference. Let’s say you needed a new cooking knife. There are plenty of artists who sell excellent handmade knives. You could buy one of those for several hundred dollars. Or you could buy mass produced semi-adequate crap for $20.
Here’s the thing, regardless of whether we are talking about paintings, music, knives, jewelry, clothes, food, or even dildos, it’s possible to buy handmade quality items created by extremely skilled artists who care about their work. Yes, it is easier to produce crap than something good. But there exist people who care about their craft and want to make good things. Thus the real problem isn’t that “it is easier to sell crap than it is to make something good,” but that making something good is time consuming and expensive, and there simply isn’t a market for such goods.
Marcus @#6
Your definition for what constitutes “real” and “fake” art is interesting. If I got your definition correctly, then for you it is about whether the artist themselves care about their work instead of just producing something that will sell. Thus whether you like some artwork depends on (is influenced by?) what you imagine about how the author perceives their own work.
That’s very different from how I see things. I start with the assumption that I cannot look into the artist’s soul and determine whether they sincerely care about their art or whether they just try to produce something that will sell. And frankly, I don’t really care about the artist who produced some work. This is what I meant in my first comment—I just don’t care about the person who made some artwork and how they felt about it.
My evaluation of some artwork (aka whether I like it) depends purely on the work itself. Is it skillfully made? Does it seem beautiful for me? Do I enjoy looking at it/listening to it? Did the author put effort into it and made it well rather than carelessly (if I notice sloppy work, I’ll like the artwork much less); did they pay attention to detail?
It would take extreme circumstances for the artist to ruin my enjoyment of some artwork. For example, if I liked some painting but later found out that the painter was a misogynistic, transphobic, racist asshole who murdered people, then this new information really would seriously dampen my ability to enjoy the artwork. But under normal circumstances I just don’t care about the artist or their feelings about the art they make.
So one of the fun things that’s happening right now is that Billie Eilish, a 17-year-old up and coming singer that most of the people here have probably not heard of unless they’re already familiar with this story, said in an interview she has no idea who Van Halen is.
Of course the howls of outrage rose up to clash against calmer voices who said that the band’s biggest hits came a couple of decades before she was even born and weren’t particularly culture defining.
It does show, however, how fleeting fame is. No matter how popular someone is at any given time, only a few names are going to last from generation to generation.
(Also, I really like “Umbrella” by Rihanna.)
Andreas Avester@#1:
I don’t care about celebrities because they are strangers to me. Some celebrity painter made a beautiful artwork that I love? Great. I will enjoy the artwork, but I just don’t really care about the person who made said artwork—after all, I do not know this artist. I just don’t care about some celebrity’s personal life or biography.
I can’t help but be curious. Especially in the case of the greatest artists of the past. Rodin, for all of his many flaws, was a fascinating character and I see some of his personal obsessions and complexities in his art. Does it make a difference to know that The Naide was modeled by Camille Claudel? No, it’s still a great work of art, but as a teenager I was in love (not a little bit, either – full blown head over heels) with the unknown person with the beautiful hips and shoulders. So, I had to find out. I find it fascinating that Caravaggio, whose artistic output is meticulously charted, was semi-unknown, a shadowy figure, who appears to have been a weird mix of thug and troll. In the case of Caravaggio’s self-destructive trollishness, it cropped up in his art regularly and is one of the things that made it great and him famous, and had assassins set on his trail. I probably would not have enjoyed a wine-lubricated dinner with him and, even if given the chance, I’d decline because I’d just ask stupid questions like the journalists who were interviewing Dylan. That said, I’d love to be at a dinner with Caravaggio and Rembrandt and to try to get them talking about technique. Assuming Caravaggio didn’t kill Rembrandt, which would be very awkward.
My point is that, whether we see it or not, these artists are characters in their art. There’s always a “why did they do that?” that can be asked.
I have a friend who became a piano jazz aficionado after listening to Keith Jarret’s concert in Cologne. He literally did not know the back-story of how that concert happened, so he was missing a major piece of information about how awesome it was. I think anyone who is familiar with that story appreciates a musical masterpiece more when they know it was made under trying conditions. That’s why we appreciate the fact that Michaelangelo probably had a pretty shitty time on his back painting the ceiling of the Sistine chapel and that he didn’t just do it in adobe illustrator.
Marcus @#6
A theoretical question. How would you feel if you found out that I never cared about the badger logotype I designed for you? That for me these designs are just a way to get some quick cash and I don’t care about these drawings and don’t put any effort into making them look as good as possible? That I make these artworks only because people seem to like tribal designs and are willing to pay for them?
(This is a theoretical question. I actually do care about the artworks I make.)
The thing is that for me such information would make no difference in how I perceive some artwork. As long as it seems beautiful for me, I will like it regardless of what I’m imagining about how the author might have felt.
LykeX@#2:
Fundamentally: Because it’s easier to sell crap than it is to make something good.
Making a product people actually want is hard work, you know. Much easier to just con them into buying whatever mass-produced bullshit you can easily ship out.
It seems to me that part of it is control. Artists (e.g.: Caravaggio, above or Chet Baker or Whitney Houston) are complex and unpredictable and to do proper big-dollar marketing you need a product that doesn’t have any skeletons in its closet and only enough back-story for an interview in Rolling Stone. I imagine that if you have a musical genius like a Bob Dylan sitting in front of you, and you’re negotiating a contract with them, you pretty quickly realize that you are not the boss of the situation – it must be what motivated the music industry to begin creating rock/pop groups instead of having to deal with real rockers. Imagine what it was like for the Milli Vanilli guys: “we own you. we made you. we can destroy you.” [That’s what I keep thinking about while watching The Boys] it’s a question of who’s the boss and they want it to be them and to make sure it stays that way. One of the fascinating transitions to watch is when you see a genuine talent break out of the marketing lock-in: Beyonce being a great recent example. I actually enjoyed some of the Destiny’s Child music I heard, but it seemed obvious from the start that they were going to never be anything but foils for Beyonce.
I have to admit that I really loved the movie That Thing You Do (if not just for the speech that Liv Tyler’s character gives when she tells off her stupid boyfriend, which was brilliant and perfect and delivered with the passion of every woman ever) – the way it captured the dynamics of a band’s spectacular rise and implosion was just perfect. Including the old sessions player who’d seen it all before.
Ray Wylie Hubbard once told a story about a young musician asking him “how did you get your committment to music?” and Ray said, “never learn how to do anything else.” Now that’s the serious musician, right there.
Andreas Avester@#10:
How would you feel if you found out that I never cared about the badger logotype I designed for you?
Well, the wiseass answer would be, “I care enough for both of us.” But you’re right – I didn’t worry about that a whole lot. Part of that is because I know you enjoy great art, and study it, and I’ve heard you compare your work to great artists. Someone who doesn’t care what they’re doing doesn’t do that – they just look at market trends and wonder what they can do that’ll sell.
The thing is that for me such information would make no difference in how I perceive some artwork. As long as it seems beautiful for me, I will like it regardless of what I’m imagining about how the author might have felt.
I agree and I understand. I sort of feel that way, too. For example, I think Andy Warhol’s stuff is kind of blah, but it’s also sheer genius because he understood the nuanced non-line between marketing and art to a degree that ought to amaze anyone. Jeff Koons’ stuff is funny and glib and some of it is amazing, but I actually don’t want to know much about him as a person because I don’t think someone who produces that kind of work is my kind of guy.
This is all very hard to sort out, for me. It’s all subjective. But I do want to know something about where the art comes from. If you think about it, that totally makes sense: I am heavily oriented toward art-forms that are really production crafts that are all about process. Consider a great Japanese sword: what makes it great? Well, the curvature and geometry and the refinement of its planes. That depends on the smith being able to execute the right blade for the person who is going to be carrying it. There’s a permanent tie between the progress of the process and the end result, and that tie is “why?” For a production craft artist, it’s also a lot of “how?” Sure, I don’t care which Japanese swordsmith invented differential quenching, and I know why they did it already – but I’d love to know just because that must have been quite a magical moment that someone had, one day.
Tabby Lavalamp@#8:
So one of the fun things that’s happening right now is that Billie Eilish, a 17-year-old up and coming singer that most of the people here have probably not heard of unless they’re already familiar with this story, said in an interview she has no idea who Van Halen is.
Now that’s funny. Good for her!
[She’s probably saying that Van Halen’s music has been irrelevant to hers, and she’s busy with her own?]
Funny, before MTV we often didn’t know what our favorite musicians looked like. One time I was visiting a friend who was married to a music critic and there was a guy there playing some cool stuff on an acoustic guitar. I said “hi!” and left and I didn’t know it was Eddie Van Halen until they mentioned later that I was awfully blase. But if it had been Jimmy Page I’d have probably just jumped out the window in extremis fan-boy. I actually didn’t care much for Van Halen (the band) so I didn’t have much interest in Van Halen (the musician) so I had no idea what he looked like. [The music critic was writing a biography of Van Halen]
brucegee1962@#4:
Know where Wyatt Earp spent his declining years? Hollywood, trying to get someone to tell his story and make him the hero he never was.
I did not know that!
John Wayne was 12 when Earp died. That’s not relevant to much, but I was curious about the overlap there.
I think that’s a certain amount of what is going on with Lil’ Miquela on Instagram. I’ve been following her for 2 years now and she’s getting better-rendered all the time, and has a lot of other sockpuppets following her, too.
[stderr]
She’s a “star” that is never going to misbehave, never have her selfies leak, never OD, never talk back, and – most of all – she’ll never complain about her contract or want a raise.
I’ve thought for a while that Hollywood will eventually do away with actors, favoring 3d renderings of licensed assets and AI-generated voice-overs. That way, you don’t have to deal with the complexities of a real Carrie Fisher, for example, dying at an awkward time. Eventually there will be eternal properties – i.e.: endless Johnny Depp movies, long after the real Depp has faded to irrelevance.
Some might say that this has already happened…
Unless I personally know the model, for me paintings feature people who are anonymous for all intents and purposes. Also, I have never felt much for some person because of liking their appearance. Maybe a bit of lust at most. Being in love with some person because of liking their physical appearance would be impossible for me. Yes, I prefer to watch porn movies that feature actors whom I perceive as handsome, but they remain anonymous for me. And for me models in some painting/sculpture feel even more anonymous than porn stars. Even if the person in some painting has recognizable facial features, I still perceive them as just a random human figure, a beautiful, yet still anonymous and generic.
Finding out the model’s name and generic facts from their biography would make no difference for me. If, on the other hand, I could have personal conversations with the model (or the artist), then yes, that would influence my feelings about some artwork. When I know a person, they stop being a stranger, and I can care about them as a friend.
I’m more likely to ask this question when artworks convey some message, for example political anti-war messages. Then I do get curious about what happened with the author and why they felt the need to create such an image.
But when I’m looking at some generic painting of a naked human, I sort of assume that probably it was created because people enjoy looking at paintings of naked humans.
What you are describing here are the kind of emotions I couldn’t possibly notice by observing other people. My ability to notice such things, perceive and correctly interpret them is miserable. I guess my disinterest in artists’ emotional lives stems from my inability to notice these things in the first place.
Come on. You didn’t answer the question. You are basically saying that you always knew I care about my art, because you have observed my actions.
That’s not the point of theoretical “what if” questions. At this point the obvious follow up question would be: What if you found out that I’m an excellent actor who is able to fake caring? And no, “I always knew you are a miserable actor,” wouldn’t be an answer.
Note: I actually am a miserable actor, but that’s beyond the point.
I once had a face to face conversation with a Latvian artist who by now is pretty famous on DeviantArt (5,667,767 pageviews as of today). He admitted that he doesn’t care what he draws, for him art was just a source of income. He was drawing whatever was popular among people willing to buy prints.
But the catch was that he was skilled as an artist, his paintings were genuinely good. Just by looking at his work I could tell that he’s spent a lot of time learning how to create art, and he was putting effort into his work. He just did it for money.
The point being—also somebody who is doing art for money can appear dedicated.
and
I am routinely curious about how some artwork was made. I care about art techniques, I’m curious about how other people make things that look absolutely amazing. When some artwork is symbolic or conveys ideas/messages, I want to figure out these hidden meanings. I am more impressed when I know that some artwork was hard to make or required immense skill. I care about whether an artwork looks like it was made with care and effort. Sloppy work doesn’t appeal to me nowhere near as much.
But I’m rarely curious about the artist as a person and their feelings. Often I don’t even care about this. Probably because for me human emotions are something that goes over my head. Nor would I be bothered if I found out that some artist only cared about money and creating things that would sell. As long as they are skilled and make high quality work, I will still like looking at these artworks.
I’m fairly interested in the lives of the people who create my favorite art (music, movies, etc.), I read a lot of bios. But I pretty much expect them to be, well, problematic at best. So I refuse to put the person on any sort of pedestal. And I don’t really have any interest in meeting my faves, since I have nothing to say to them that they haven’t heard a million times before. I was thinking earlier about how much I like the Archers of Loaf, but if the band showed up on my doorstep later tonight, I’d probably just ask if they were lost, instead of “OMG, what are the lyrics to ‘Sick File’?”
I’m tired, so this isn’t coming out anywhere near as coherent as I’d like it to. :)
The organisation that my father worked at and was chairman of for some years has a tradition of memorialising it’s chairmen (as far as I know they have all been men) with a sculpted head or painted portrait. It was interesting to me that the artist managed to capture very clearly what dad loooked like when he was working – and Not To Be Disturbed – even when doing so in a room open to the stairs at home, and all of my siblings recognised that look, and all of us dislike the painting. There is no doubt it is a good portrait of the mathematician at work, but for us it is a portrait showing us our unavailable father, someone we saw too often at home and who we had to live our lives around without disturbing his genius. His colleagues all thought the portrait was wonderful. I’ve no idea who the painter was, how well known or otherwise they are/were, but catching that particular side of my father, as opposed to any other, certainly demonstrated a high level of skill. And to bring it back to the converstaion I think there is a difference between when an artist is using a model to get the shapes right and when they are painting an individual as themselves.
But yeah, no heroes they all let you down.
For a lot of people the question becomes, how is it possible to be a great – or even SLIGHTLY – successful artist, without checking into the Hotel California?
Jazzlet @#19
In the former scenario the artist needs to correctly portray body proportions and pose. In the latter scenario they need to get right a specific configuration of facial muscles. I probably sound cynical, but I don’t believe in artistic inspiration or talent or whatever other qualities people tend to romanticize. Portraying some emotion in a portrait painting/drawing is a matter if depicting a specific configuration of facial muscles. Specific poses and color schemes also help with portraying a mood/emotion.
My comment @#10
I just realized that I should have used the word “hypothetically” when phrasing my question. I could have expressed this idea more clearly.
You spend a while liking something (for example, an artwork), and then at some point you find out that you didn’t know some negative facts about the person who made said thing. What happens at that moment is interesting.
For the last few years I have been regularly buying cakes from a small business. Those cakes were really great and tasty. A few weeks ago I found out that the owner of said bakery belonged to an odd Christian sect that didn’t allow their members go to a doctor. This resulted in a woman dying in childbirth, because members of her community prayed for her and didn’t take her to a hospital. This discovery seriously ruined my appreciation of the formerly tasty cakes. Now I cannot look at them without being reminded about religious lunatics who caused an avoidable death.
But if I had imagined that some person was making some art or music or handmade items because of passion and later I found out that they only cared about money/fame/travel opportunities/attention, I would just shrug and not be upset. It’s not like those motivations are bad or immoral.
If some artwork is skillfully made, my appreciation for it could be tainted by the artist being an asshole but not by the artist being a practically-minded person—the former evokes in me unpleasant thoughts and associations (as with the formerly tasty cakes), but the latter is just life as usual, because I’m not even that disappointed. I must admit that I’m cynical by nature—I already assume that at least some of my favorite artists must be in it for money. In one scenario I am disappointed, because I expected the artist to be at least a semi-decent human being, in the other scenario I’m not really truly disappointed.
Sometimes who the artist is is a huge part of the art they create.
I’m still able to read Marion Zimmer Bradley’s books (admittedly with some qualms), despite knowing about how she treated people in her life and her complicity in her husband’s sexual abuse of children, because her writing doesn’t constantly remind me of that aspect of her life.
On the other hand, after I heard some of the stuff that Woody Allen has done, I can’t watch his movies any more, because they’re all about Woody Allen, and his creepiness is all over them, once you are aware of it. (IMHO, “Manhattan” is a blatant admission that he sees nothing wrong with sex between him and children — i.e., that he’s an unrepentant child molester.)
Allison @22:
Yup. And I’ve long thought (since well before his creepiness became overt) that, as you say more politely, Allen’s oeuvre is one long wank.
The problem here is that successful here is generally defined in capitalist terms. They’ve already checked in, they’re just trying to wrangle an upgrade to a fancier room.
If you’re an artist your only a sucess under capitalism while you have something they can sell.
Also what the fuck is this guy’s problem with tattoos and piercings? I’ll flight him :P
I dunno. I think celebrities are sort of silly, it’s just a brand with a spokesman, generally. This has been going on in the creative arena forever. How many swords are there where we know it came out of so-and-so’s shop, be we don’t know if it was the hand of the master, or one of the students? Is the Virgin of the Rocks a Leonardo, or an assistant’s work? Which one, anyways?
Workshops full of minions seem to have existed in multiple cultures across a lot of time, with work credited at least sort of to the hand of the master (the figurehead, the celebrity).
What is fake, anyways? Dylan is no less a corporation than Taylor Swift.
Anyways, celebrities are an emergent phenomenon. Tribes are built around a common culture, and that culture is made up of a random selection of symbols, traditions, rituals. If we want the world to cohere as a tribe — and we do — then we’re gonna need some shared culture.
Is that gonna be PZ Myers petulant rejection of practically everything? Is it gonna be Scott Alexander’s endless series of 10,000 word essays about bullshit? Is it going to be Existential Comics endless ever-so-smart snarking off? Is it, in fact, going to involve anyone whatsoever whose schtick is built around being smart and/or reasonable?
No. It’s going to be some celebrities, which is to say some media corporations, which produce something that touches people’s hearts and livers, and gets their blood moving to the same beat. You can kill God, but you cannot kill the basic human nature that made God. I don’t give much of a damn if the song was written by Beyonce or a team of fixers, if it gets my pulse up. I don’t care if Koons’ has a workshop full of.. welders or whatever, if I like the stupid balloon dog. I don’t care that Gregory Crewdson or Stephen Meisel work with huge crews, if their photos move me.
I don’t even much care if they’re shitty people. We’re all shitty people, after all, and it doesn’t make any sense to me to have some shittiness cutoff where your art is OK up to >this< point and then after that it sucks.
Andrew Molitor @26:
QFT, as the kids say.
dangerousbeans@#25:
Also what the fuck is this guy’s problem with tattoos and piercings? I’ll flight him :P
He, his wife, and his son all have lots.* I think the point is that there does seem to be something where a musician gets successful and suddenly goes crazy with the mods. (c.f: Justin Bieber, Lenny Kravitz) Nothing wrong with it at all, it just seems to be part of the scene at this time. Like how, in the 40s, you had to get an addiction or something.
(* “She’s got a tattoo on her arm, it’s of a python eating a little mouse wearing a sailor hat that reads ‘snake farm'” – from Snake Farm I damn near got one of those but Andreas’ badger logo was much better.)
Andeas @#21
I think many people have, argh not sure of the right word, I will go with ‘apitude’ for something, and because they find that activity pleasurable as well as comparatively easy (compared to other activities) they pursue it and so spend enough time on it to become at least competant. For instance I find biological subjects relatively easy as well as fascinating, and can pick up the basics of new topics with little effort when compared to say history which I am interested in, but don’t retain the details of half as well. And that ties into what kind of art an artist ends up doing too, to be a potrait painter you have some people skills that say a landscape artist wouldn’t need. Does that make any sense to you?
Allison @#22 and Rob Grigjanis @#23
Me too regarding Woody Allen, I always thought he was too self-absorbed, which is kind of one definition of a creep – making everything about them.
I do have people I admire, but I don’t expect them to be perfect nor to share my every ideal so they never become heroes to me. John Peel would be one, Terry Pratchett another and my SiL a third
All of the tidbits I’ve read about Dylan suggest that he’s a rather nasty & sleazy character, so I guess it’s a smart move for him to lay low. It’s remarkable, looking back, how much pure gossip was published in magazines and newspapers, pre-internet.
polishsalami@#30:
All of the tidbits I’ve read about Dylan suggest that he’s a rather nasty & sleazy character […]
That’s why I used him as an example – he’s definitely “complicated”
At least I don’t have to try to defend Woody Allen’s art. I think Sleeper is the only semi-good movie he made and that wasn’t as funny as what Mel Brooks was doing right down the hall.
Marcus @28
I can’t blame them, I got moderately successful (by my standards) then blam, octopus everywhere
Ed sheeran was the one that surprised me. His music is so bland (IMO) and it looks like he has a full body suit.
All this seems like more evidence that the human brain is not able to really work with societies larger than about 1,000 people.
Andreas Avester @ 7: That’s kind of what killed the Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain in the late 19/ early 20C: William Morris and his group wanted to push back against the flood of bad products that early mass-production had made possible and make more authentic items, with real craftsmanship that would enrich their owners’ lives. But they could never match the scale of the factory-made products, so the only people who could afford what they produced were the captains of industry who’d gotten rich selling the very tat to the masses that they were rebelling against. It’s a perennial problem.