I was at a dinner party a while ago, sitting next to a magazine editor. She was interested in my year abroad as an artist, and told me that her ex was a “failed artist.” Meaning, she explained, he’d made it to 60 and never achieved the success he’d hoped. Awful, but let’s not mince words, most of us artists will end up like this.
I wonder if this editor had given her former mate this moniker, or had he labeled himself? It takes so long before we can say we are “Artists” (it’s a role we feel we have to earn, somehow). And then what do we have, 20 years to make it? 30? And what makes us a success? Selling? Gallery representation? Small regional museum show? Tenure track position in academia? Respect from our peers? Not starving? If we earn a modicum of fame, must we maintain it?
And what does it mean to say the father of your children (cause she had grown kids) is Failed? That she was a success? That she had chosen to be responsible, a business woman, while he had chased dreams unsuccessfully? The whole thing smelled, like being with someone who drops names or flouts toys.
3 comments:
However, the basic problem of the human function of a genuine democracy, a work-democracy, is more than just a problem of ecomomy of labor. More than anything else it is a matter of changing the nature of work so that it ceases to be an onerous duty and becomes a gratifying fulfillment of a need.
Wilhelm Reich
kloe, word up... ohhh art what is the path? I'm graduating.?!
p.s. I have been getting a lot of spam comments. Do you know how to prevent this?
Larry, see Response Quote. I would prefer cruelty and cupidity, but am my own moral busybody.
Sugar, I don't get spam, but you have to put up a filter, blogger can do it for you.
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