Hacker News Reader

Comment by keiferski | Hacker News Reader

I printed this HN comment out about 3 years ago and still have it on my wall as motivation. It's from an article about a lifelong artist that never quite "made it" and I think it is a good answer to the question.

Compare him to Picasso. Picasso never said "I had to pay the rent." He never considered earning money with anything other than painting. When he had no money he lived in friends' apartments. He faced and accepted poverty and hunger. Picasso did not compromise. Same with Van Gogh. Paintings on their own have no value. Buyers pay for the life story of the painters. The more heroic is your life the more expensive your paintings. Painter's job is to market himself in order to create a life mythology. This guy just painted. He did not create a myth around his life.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16092168

View on HN

By "this guy", I take it you're referring just to the guy from the original piece. Basquiat very much created a myth about his life -- partly in collaboration with Andy Warhol, one of the greatest self-mythmakers in the art world.

I don't mean to diminish Basquiat's art or his story. I'm just affirming (by way of clarifying) what you said: the artist's life is a part of their art, and part of what you pay for.

It's not my comment, I was just quoting it. But yes, the original commenter meant the man in the article.

I agree far more with the top response to that quote than I do to the quote.

I think you and that commenter misunderstand that quote. Picasso's is not the only story that an artist must follow to become renowned, just one of them. The fame and fortune around an artist are nearly entirely the product of the mythology surrounding them and the connections they have with other influential people rather than their output.

> The fame and fortune around an artist are nearly entirely the product of the mythology surrounding them and the connections they have with other influential people rather than their output.

Sure, there is an element of storytelling, the ability of the artist to become a brand somehow, and another is the connections. For an artist to rise to fame, being in the right place at the right time, or rather, we should say, going to that place plays a role. But that is still an oversimplification.

To rise to super-fame, beyond the enticing or compelling story element and getting the connections to influential people, you've got to pull out the works. All those artists shipped; they were more creative and productive than the others, regardless of the quality/legacy of their oeuvre.

That commenter retired their account:

Account retired April 2020 (would delete but mere users aren't entrusted with this ability). Reasons? Legion.

Proximate: the moderator "dang" discourages contributors from questioning billionaire ubermenschens' statements from on high. Obedience to the megaconsuming 1% is the last thing we need right now.

Ultimate: The SV locus of the tech scene, of which HN is a cog, is a marketing tool for extremist hypergrowthers (and their propagandised aspirants to world-consuming greed). This is the most dangerous class of humans ever to have existed, constituting a grave threat to the entire biosphere. Undermining it, a task beyond my talents, would be valuable. Continuing to contribute to it is however unconscionable.

Susan Sontag sums up the ultimate social achievement of the artist well. It's about the Aesthetics of Silence. The more withdrawn an artist becomes, the more celebrated. The ultimate level according to her, is not communicating, and not even creating anything.

> So far as he is serious, the artist is continually tempted to sever the dialogue he has with an audience. Silence is the furthest extension of that reluctance to communicate, that ambivalence about making contact with the audience which is a leading motif of modern art, with its tireless commitment to the “new” and/or the “esoteric.” Silence is the artist’s ultimate other-worldly gesture: by silence, he frees himself from servile bondage to the world, which appears as patron, client, consumer, antagonist, arbiter, and distorter of his work.

– Susan Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence

Creating a market for you product is an art in and of itself.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com