i watched amadeus last night...excellent movie though rather long. i made the mistake of starting it around midnight and next thing i knew it was three. silly me. and then i couldn't sleep afterwards....
i am keenly aware of this artistic torture that many artists end up in...either b.c of something they've done or something that someone else is doing to them. the true creative genius hardly ever seems to be paired with sensibility. so what am i?
in gk chesterton's orthodoxy he lays out an entire reasoning of how the creative genius actually keeps one sane--that it is the logicians and those who analyze and reason that go insane. which to some extent i would agree with. but artists--visual, musicians, writers, theaters, the whole bit, the ones that you read about in history books are often extremely tortured souls. this genius seems to possess them and take over til nothing else exists. its as if in order to create this work that will last for ages, they must live in an alternative universe and going back and forth between the two worlds becomes too much for them to handle--hence, the drinking, drugs, irresponsibility, lack of relationships, etc.
this is something that i sense in myself more often than not. i am aware of the torture because i struggle with it myself, particularly in the last few months. and if i were left to my own devices in such a situation, i'm pretty sure i'd start down the same path of pollock, mozart, dickinson, etc in some form or fashion of my own making.
Is it possible to be an artist with healthy relationships and a healthy lifestyle and still yield to the creative genius when it calls?
sometimes i think its the guilt of not living that healthy, responsible life that drives artists insane, not the actual creative genius.
And maybe we never hear of the creative geniuses who are responsible, healthy citizens because culture does not record such things because they aren't interesting or exciting.
and now name for me the last great artist, especially visual, that has stood the test of time who had great faith. you have to go back to the renaissance for michelangelo or raphael for visual. music has survived in at least some faint way, however b.c church never quite discarded music. But the visual arts were completely banned in much of the Reformation and we are just now beginning to recognize the power of the visual in the church some 400 years later b.c of the postmodern culture of today which is so 'relative' and can't recognize truth if its staring it in the face. how is that for truth?
so where does an artist go?
Even madeleine l'engle in walking on water disclaims much of modern/postmodern art because it blatantly disregards the first Creator. you could say the same of philosophers. With Nietsche God 'died' in philosophy. And who knows when God 'died' in visual art... but long before God 'died' in these studies, the church abandoned them. and i think it'd be fair to say that with abandoning these studies, the church did itself a HUGE disservice.
so where does an artist/philosopher with faith tendencies go?
i don't have an answer to that question. i am a complete and utter contradiction. i possess the self control and discipline that many artists often struggle to possess and the morals that come from my christian faith seem to keep me from wasting my life away. but the same christian morals/self control/discipline creates this sense of responsibility that when i don't follow them, which is more likely than not because of my creative spirit, also creates guilt because my creative spirit fights it.
never mind that i hardly ever have any desire to portray my faith in my art work/it seems completely irrelevant at times. if anything i often create my artwork to wrestle the inner demons onto the paper and out of my soul, at least for awhile. people would say its dark.
and never mind that if i want anything i do to be taken seriously in the art world, its more than likely going to be shunned/disregarded by the church.
so again i ask where does an artist go?
No comments:
Post a Comment