Never Trust an Artist

Literary Criticism

Lying

Writers On Writing

Creativity

Never Trust An Artist

Illuminati Ganga Agent 86

5 min read·

Just now

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This is not going to be another one of those article about how you need to separate the art from the artist, this is about the artist, when asked to put themselves together is often a lying evil bastard dedicated to confusing your view of them.

Why this should be the case should not surprise anyone, if artists of various sorts are people more creative than others, and able to use that creativity to their benefit why shouldn’t they use that creativity to make up stories that affect your perception of what they do in the way they want it. I course know why they should not, from the point of view of the people being lied to, but it is a trickier proposition from the viewpoint of the artist.

We said the following about the artist’s needs in communication about their art, or that of others

It would perhaps be nice if an artist also was able to consider all the facets that a critic needs to but this is also not necessary. It might be argued that an artist with too much grasp of the critic’s requirements would be apt to produce less vital art, as the considerations of the critic are to be applied after the process of creation not before.

It is of course true that an artist does not need to have these two facets available to talk meaningfully about art that is not their own, but as a general rule one wishes to hear artists talk about their own art, and others art in relation to their own, and in the case of speaking meaningfully about their own art the artist should keep these factors in mind.

If an artist discusses their own work too directly there is a danger that they will lessen the impact of that work for others or cause a prejudice in those who would otherwise come to the work unprejudiced, thus the artist must also maintain some circumspection if discussing their work.

One obvious way to maintain circumspection when discussing one’s work is to discuss work that others have done, that has been an influence, or to write essays that suggest how one should produce art in the artist’s chosen medium and genre. A fantasy writer writing about how to write fantasy is of course going to tell you, however obliquely, how they do it, how they think it should be done, and what they consider the purpose of it all to be.

While in the article Speaking Without Meaning About Art

Artists will often have reasons to speak without meaning about art, although you might wish this were not the case. The reasons that artists choose to speak without meaning about are can generally be enumerated as;

1. The artist is discussing their own art, but finds discussion about art to be problematic and potentially demeaning, therefore they have a strategy of misleading people when discussing their own art. At any rate the creator of a work often has multiple reasons why they want to obfuscate the sources or meanings of the work. If successful or looking at potential success after all the artist is also their own publicist whenever discussing the work.

2. The artist is discussing the art of a rival, and instead of addressing the art on its merits they would like to deal with it maliciously. This can happen quite often, especially if a rival in a rival in the public’s imagination or the critical world but you do not even find their work to your taste, much less think it any good. This kind of thing is likely to get someone to talk smack, and smack is not meaningful.

Agent 18 has an anecdote about writing fake book reports in high school, because essentially the guidelines writing about books in the relevant course struck him as insulting to the books, and to his understanding of them. Therefore he felt it necessary to lie and create other, fake books to discuss. Books that he had not read because they had not existed.

Borges famously created books that did not exist o discuss in reviews of those books

Clearly, with some writers at least, one cannot expect a truthful description of reality.

In some ways to expect such a thing is to attempt to circumscribe their art.

Indeed, such an expectation would seem to go against internet based forms of narrative

where meaning and the bounds of the narrative are more fungible than most literary forms throughout the ages.

This has been your periodic reminder of something you should be aware of — courtesy of Illuminati Ganga.

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