Identifying as an Artist
mattgemmell.scot
mattgemmell.scot
That and "Crumb" are a couple of films that convinced me that some people just are artists. It's not ego, or some desire to be eccentric ... they can't help it. They live "the art life", damn the consequences.
You could handily list any number of other people (John Waters just came to mind).
Similar to the author of the blog post, I have sort of demurred when asked if I was an artist. Partly it sounds arrogant to say, "Why, yes I am."
Partly it seemed to be a thing in the eye of the beholder. "I don't know, do you think I am an artist?" Plenty of people don't think Andy Warhol was an artist, Jackson Pollock....
Sometimes I have treated "artist" as a profession. Do I get paid for my art? Why no, I do not. I get paid for programming. Although when I write a game I am both programmer and "game artist". (Or is perhaps designing an elegant API for a framework a kind of art form? Okay, maybe not.)
If an artist can be a hobbyist the way many of us are amateur musicians, woodworkers, cooks, mechanics, (construction contractors), in our spare time then, yes, many of us are artists.
I think the older I get though (and maybe the more films I see about artists) I am slowly coming to accept that, sure, I'm an artist too. Just maybe not a very good one.
I haven't seen the film but this is the defining part of the "artist" title for me. It's not that he wasn't able to instantiate his vision, but he made an attempt and that attempt had an impact on others. That is the art, and it's all performance. The instantiation doesn't matter so much as a message with receivers. If the receivers of whatever happened with his Dune weren't there, then I guess I would still call it something like a "lost" art. Still art, but unrecognized as such. And I'm not sure that would have mattered to the artist anyway.
By the way, "The War of Art", and its sequel, "Turning Pro" are fantastic books on this topic. These books would be my number one recommendation to anyohe who aspires to be an artist.
I highly recommend checking out his work.
There are so many definitional and semantic struggles around who gets to call themselves “artist” or “hobbyist”. Among the most fraught involves money, as if you don’t get to call yourself an artist unless you derive your primary income from what would otherwise be called art. I’m more interested in your commitment to create, to inspire, and to present something deeply individual in what you create.
More than all of that though, I’ve long felt that programming computers is art. You don’t have to identify with that, but it’s a fundamentally creative pursuit. It’s full of choices and expression and compromise and imperfection. At least from my perspective, anyone who has made something that makes machines do things is qualified to claim the title “artist” if they would like to.
Maybe my working class upbringing? I generally tell people I am just a programmer. I think it sounds kind of like plumber which I like.
I have a CS degree (first class, from a very respected uni) and still wouldn't class myself as a "computer scientist", I reserve that term for those who are doing research in the field
I don't think this is entirely true or accurate. Unless plumbing profession also has the phenomena of plumbers removing hair balls, and other junk, from pipes put in there by other plumbers .. that said, in Brazil, we did get a glimpse of working on a typical large codebase.
Initially, my success as an artist had made it easier for people to accept me into the community. However, when I decided to stop commercially painting, people labeled me as a crazy man who had no sense of direction. Only when money returned to my pocket did they embrace me once again as a success.
If your concern as an artist is solely based on gaining people's approval, then you are approaching it wrong. Creativity is an inherent quality that yearns to be liberated from within every individual.
Society needs the unconventional and daring ideas of artists, which they are not capable of producing due to the perceived risk involved in this lifestyle.
As an artist, your guiding principle should be a self-honesty that is driven by a clear egoistic purpose (in a good way). The most crucial aspect of being an artist is the production of artwork. If you let your art speak to the world, then the rest is merely a matter of marketing.
Try finding a broader range of developers and artists to spend time around. Your world view may expand.
I have my experience of it. That yours differs, why do you need to invalidate mine? Why can't we both exist? No I think it is maybe your world view that needs to expand, son, and by not being inclusive of mine, but instead trying to shoot it down you are displaying the very same inflexibility that I identified which you simultaneously pretend does not exist! Ha!! :) ;p xx ;p
Think about that next time before you're "blunt". A blunt instrument has limited use....even for artists! ;p :)
That's why I got the reaction? No, I got the reaction because that guy's insecure he's not an artist, and he's choosing to be a little meanie.
Oh I see, so you're a victim now? Of your own misinterpretation? Wilful wanting to see a fault so you can claim to be right? Pathological need to be "victimized" to justify attacking someone?
Look the bottom line is, you wouldn't be unhappy if you didn't think it was true. So don't blame me if it's true for you. If you don't like it, just fix yourself.
Intuitive feelers ("artist types") often clash with observant thinkers ("engineer types") according to the theory and I've experienced this a lot, too.
That one correlates with engineers in my experience. It's a precision in specification thing.
> less inclined to believe that I have all the answers and believe anything beyond what I know cannot exist
That one doesn't. That's intellectual inadequacy.
Intuition is a close approximation to making the right choice with inadequate information, aka "successful engineering".
I think one of the things I base this one is, you see posts on here about aliens, UFOs, remote viewing, right? All of this paranormal psychology stuff. And you see all these replies like: X is impossible (with X being: aliens exist; aliens would visit us; aliens could visit us; aliens are visiting us; remote viewing is real). And people often invariably say: "It's not possible to do X using physics". And I'm like: but physics isn't settled, we don't know everything, it's so arrogant! But they don't budge, they don't care. So it very much is a real thing.
You don't even have to get such common topics--I mean all kinds of non-mainstream topics, which I would love engineers to engage with--they don't. Pandemic: conformity of thinking; all kinds of stuff and they just stick to the mainstream narrative. Anyway, I've definitely seen that. I get if you haven't, but it's out there, man. Hah :)
Rather, I think, most adults don't get to be successful artists - and in turn, most artists don't do it seeking success, they do it because it feels good to create. Creating art for its own sake, or for your own sake, is notoriously difficult to monetize though - creating art for an audience requires that you consider the desires of your patron(s), and that's a different skill than pure creative expression.
Could also range from novelist to Substacker...
If they wanted to “further the conversation” they could have shown you examples of what they do, or told about their art more. If they choose not to that is on them. Perhaps they were tired, perhaps they found your question boring, perhaps they had some insecurities around their art or you, perhaps you rubbed them the wrong way.
So my theory is that if there is a dedicated word for the highest status activity, that word tends to naturally accumulate all semantic layers that artistic activities do.
But even in English, visual arts tend to just be 'art'. You can be a 'painter', but if you don't paint then there isn't really any word, unless you identify as a drawer.
One of the advantages for me: most people assume that "art projects" generally don't start with the expectation that one is going to profit insanely (contrasted with the perception when one says "I'm doing a startup"). The measure of success is simply getting the work out there into the public, that is all an artist can do. The rest is up to the consumer.
This is the perspective that works for me and keeps me happy and humble. For me, when I gave up trying to control other peoples perceptions of myself, my life became much easier.
(edit: I'm doing something in the NFT space, so it's also technically true as well as metaphorically) YMMV.
What do you tell other people in this situation? It depends on the person, but telling others you're a musician either means you trust them enough not to roll their eyes (lots of people don't, merely being polite), or you just don't care, in which case it can be a kind of a challenge (k, let's see how you react).
Also, personally I suspect this can be a huge barrier to ever getting a job in tech.
The writers and photographers and actors I know who identify as such are either doing it as their profession, or attempting to do so, for money.
I would have thought you only really get into trouble here when you’re using it to try and describe a facet of your identity, and people assume you’re describing your work.
Yikes. Tell us how you really feel
I asked them, what is your medium?
And they replied: LIFE.