One Man's Art Explosion

 Christopher Byram, opinion writer

At this age, many things are difficult.

Things have been difficult for everyone since age 2, for the most part. Pain exists in the world. That is an undeniable absolute. The fact that teenagers and young adults are more emotionally unbalanced (or emotionally inexperienced) is also a given. We’re all a little screwy, even if it’s just chemistry that’s screwing with our heads. The painful chemistry of puberty, post puberty, and often the introduction of a chemical combination of drugs and/or alcohol paired with the body’s own hormonal wreck are enough to create a whole new brand of pain and anguish.

As children grow into adolescents, that pain and anguish begin to form a voice. For many people, that suffering becomes expressed through the arts, music, poetry, creative writing, and of course, paints and oils.

Art is borne of pain and suffering into one form or another. Everyone feels pain at one point, but not everyone is an artist, and that is something that needs to be recognized.

There are many great, great young artists in the world, plenty with more talent than most of us will ever hope to have. We all have pain; some of it is more readily identifiable, while some of it isn’t. Some of it can be expressed plainly, some of it in metaphor, some in song, and some in pastels. Some of it can’t be expressed in any tangible form at all, only in alcohol abuse, drug addiction and suicide, which is no healthy way to end pain, as it only creates more in the process. I don’t have a problem with people expressing themselves though art. In fact, I encourage it… but with some limits.

The purpose of art isn’t under fire here, and the countless talented young artists in the world shouldn’t be criticized too harshly, even if those would-be artists are in a phase that lends itself more to misguided emotional outbursts than art. After all, everyone has to start somewhere, but a lot of students seem to think that just because they strum a few clumsy chords on a guitar, or jot down a few choppy lines of verse, all of a sudden they’re qualified and accomplished artists, whether they’re studying art or not. (Most of them aren’t.)

Let me use the craft of poetry as an example. Anyone with a pen and some stationery can put words to their anguish, space it out in some strange way, and call it poetry, but that doesn’t necessarily make it an artistic expression. I would be willing to guess that almost every girl on the planet has attempted to use some twisted brand of poetry to attempt to express the way she feels about a certain boy, or why the world is so unfair, blah blah blah. Even a lot of boys may have tried their hand at verse and prose, what with all the popularity of being a young, unaccomplished, untalented musician these days.

It’s very easy to write down a few words that paint some bland, cliché picture of loneliness and anguish. Some of it might even end up being rather decent, but most of it is trash and that is also another undeniable fact to those with the sense to recognize it. Any hack could pull out a thesaurus and write down all the synonyms for the word “sad” and call it a private manifesto of suffering. The problem isn’t the expression of emotion, it’s the cheap, uncreative method that people are using to do it.

The most common and obvious example of art gone to hell comes in the form of “stream of consciousness” writing. It’s a simple form of expression because it takes absolutely no skill, which of course makes it widely available. The idea is to write what one is thinking, without any particular emphasis on organization or selective language. Generally, stream of consciousness writing ends up sounding like one very long, very schizophrenic paragraph with no particular point or purpose. It might evoke a mixture of emotions through the language that the writer used, but generally the writing is unfocused, unclear and usually not well written.

With the popularity of the In-Tar-Nets and online blogs and social websites –Myspace.com, for example- every teeny bopper on the planet has an open audience and a quick, easy way to publish or spread his or her work without all the hassle of skill, creativity, or editing, especially. Some of it is really good. In fact, some of it is amazing, and it’s wonderful that those young artists have an easy way of spreading their work. Technology has greatly benefited those people.

But the mix of art and technology is not all bright and wonderful. For every genuine, talented artist, there are a thousand obnoxious, untalented nobodies dying to get some attention. It wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t actually getting that attention, but for every crybaby writing feelings down or putting them into song, there’s another person praising it, no matter how horrible the work may be. Not everyone is an art critic, either.

These halfbaked artists and Internet junkies often cite no previous artist as an influence or inspiration. They insist that they are their own inspiration and guidance. That’s well and good, but as with any other craft, there are certain things to understand.

Art is a craft, in any form it takes. Paint, poetry, fiction… all of this is art, but art is a craft as much as any other trade. Creating art takes training, patience, and practice. A genuine master is born with the skills for the craft, just as a great carpenter has inborn skill with woodworking, just as any great mathematician has innate skill with arithmetic and mathematical formulae, but even the greatest masters have always had masters above them, or at least some influence or force that directed them. This could be something as simple as an education, or as specific as an apprenticeship to an older, more experienced artist.

Some artists are capable of learning more quickly than others, and without the need for a mentor or teacher to instruct them in the ways of creating artistic craft, but they are few and far between. They are the greatest masters of artistic craft. Most people are not capable of this innate knowledge, and are in need of at least some instruction or introduction. Even more people are simply incapable of creating anything that could be considered art, and these people are by far the most common. They are, of course, the most numerous of the would-be artists. They are only able to create in their own image and along their own lines, which is to say sub-par in all things. Their capacity for creativity and imagination may be as deep as any other man or woman’s, but some critical thing prevents them from being capable of any sort of creative force.

Citing horrible artists as influences is almost as bad as citing no influence at all. It’s just like pop bands influencing more pop bands to create even more mediocre music that’s engineered to sell, not inspire. There’s a clear unbalance here –too much heart and not enough talent. What makes art isn’t just possessing deep emotions or profound thoughts, isn’t an expression of emotion or substance, it’s expressing that emotion in a way that astounds and inspires. Without some direction, that emotion -no matter how profound it may be- just comes out in some clumsy, fumbling collection of sentences.

Art is a funny thing. It’s different to different people. “Another man’s trash is another man’s treasure…” and all that. Not everything that people put out into the world is viewed negatively, but there is a problem with that, too. It only shows that our standards have sunk so low as to allow any inexperienced, overemotional sap to pump out a few lines of verse and be hailed as the next Eliot, or throw some paint on a canvas and bring another dull, boring landscape piece into the world., or even worse… an abstract piece.

It seems to make sense that the common will agree with the common, and so unartistic people see some pathetic attempt at an expression of emotion and shower the author with undeserved praise. It isn’t that person’s fault that he or she is completely incapable of identifying art from trash. You can hardly blame an empty head for being moved by something that shows even a hint of substance. After all, if art didn’t at least have some substance, would it really be anything more than another clumsy attempt at expression? But empty heads don’t know any better; they don’t have anything to compare with. That can be blamed on all sorts of things, but I don’t think that’s much of an excuse. Maybe they should read more.

A person who doesn’t read has no business writing, much less tossing out praise on the work of one of their overemotional girlie friends. That goes for every other method of artistic expression on the face of the planet. A person without at least some familiarity with the material that he or she is reviewing can’t be expected to offer up a credible opinion. Otherwise, it just comes out sounding either ignorant or full of b.s.

The one good thing that comes from this art explosion is practice… at least the would-be artists are getting some decent practice in. Unfortunately, practice does not make perfect if the seed of skill and talent hasn’t been properly cultivated. A person can write, paint or whatever else his or her entire life and know all the elements of tasteful art and still fall short of being an artist because of a simple lack of skill and talent. That isn’t a shame, it’s simply the cards that have been dealt.

So, not everyone is an artist. That’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with only some people being artistic. Not everyone is a politician, or a criminal, or even just a humdrum accountant, either. It takes certain people to fill certain positions in the world, and some individuals fill certain positions much better than others.

This shouldn’t be viewed as discouragement to all the talented individuals who are pouring their hearts, souls, and blood into their work. They deserve praise for their work, but some people do not deserve the credit that they’re receiving for publishing trash.