Art and Value

Just as sports fanatics love to speculate about numbers and strategy, and politics junkies love to speculate on polls and issues, artists love to debate the question of “what is art?” At least, they’ve loved it for the last century, since Duchamp started asking. But a more unique question that I have grappled with for years is, “what is an artist?”

Having never been to art school, and until recently only having created a single weekly comic strip, rather than anything in the so-called “fine” arts, I have always felt like an outsider. Although I have been producing The Invisible Life of Poet for six years, I was always hesitant to call myself an “artist”. My work never seemed to rise to the definition, as if it were a kind of “quasi-art” or “common art” or even (horror of horrors!) a “craft”.

There is, of course, no accepted definition of “art”, but whatever it is, I didn’t feel like what I did qualified. The pieces I produce take very little work compared to the work done by painters, or sculptors, or musicians, or dancers. (Of course, one can argue that what I do is serial art, and that it is the larger premise and its execution, not any individual piece, that makes it worthy of the label. But I’ll save that for another article.)

Today, I do label myself an artist, but first I had to be recognized as such by other people I could very definitely recognize as artists. In fact, it was a local theatre manager I met at the Encore awards earlier this year who suggested that my work is actually a form of performance art. Whether true or not, this was, to a stranger in a strange land, like a warm and boisterous welcoming party at the gates, complete with feasts and fair maidens. It made me feel as if I could be a part of a very exclusive club that I respected and envied.

One of many popular definitions of what makes something “art” is to say that “Art is valuable”. It is culturally respectable and worthy of our attention, or even worthy of a $140 million bid at Sotheby’s. Those who produce it, the “Artists” are therefore respectable and worthy of our attention. They are cultural signposts, freethinkers, and confident executors of their vision of the world. I think that the question of “am I an artist?” is then the same question as “am I culturally valuable?”

Perhaps this can also serve to answer the question “why are many artists such incorrigibly arrogant assholes?” Based on my argument, one might speculate it is because somehow, even before they became artists, they were filled with a sense of blind self-importance, of personal and cultural value. Or if nothing else, they’ve learned the benefits of posturing value outwardly, even if beneath the surface they actually hate themselves.

As it turns out, a definitive answer to the question “am I an artist?” didn’t come until I was able to answer the question, independent of the work I do, “am I valuable?” I was not filled with ridiculous self-importance as a child (quite the opposite). I had to find a deep wellspring of self-confidence on my own, and get my act together to be able to make that leap. The question was only made difficult by my own insecurity, and had little to do with the works I produced.

And now that I can confidently proclaim myself an artist, I get to be the incorrigibly arrogant asshole, bored by a world of frauds, poseurs, and also-rans. Isn’t that what art is really about? Unfettered hysterical elitism? I certainly hope so…