Make Good Art

Everyone should aspire to artistry. But we're not all artists.

Two things can be true at once. Many more in fact. We can maintain more than one side to ourselves, we can live multiple lives. Artists and artistry are different things. Last night, I watched this commencement speech by author Neil Gaiman. He is addressing liberal art students at their university. It’s a great speech. It’s a romantic speech. But I felt the need to add some practical footnotes.

I love his message: enjoy your craft, savour the moments, don’t let other people make up the rules for your life, be more creative. It’s good stuff. It’s the type of content you want to share just to be associated with it. It will go into my newsletter this week.

There is one niggling disclaimer I must add: this message is for artists.

There are more than eight billion people on this planet. We are not all artists. We cannot all be artists. This is not a popular thing to say, so I will clarify what I mean. By artists, I mean professional artists (paid artists), where your primary role in society is expressing yourself with a medium like words or paint or notes or other. Musicians, painters, dancers, writers, poets, designers.

There is a gray area of artists. Some sports people are artists. Some marketing people are artists. Artists are founds in unexpected places. The norms of their roles cannot contain them. They express themselves in such a way that they can’t be ignored, they move people.

Some blander careers like interior design require a great deal of creativity and artistry - even if this is not quite art. I would say there is the potential for art in everything, in every work, in every field, art is in the things done beautifully, elegantly, movingly, creatively. But this does not make us all “artists”.

I would say there is a bar to pass for something to be considered art - it makes people feel. Artists have this as their primary objective. Brian Eno said “art is everything you don’t have to do”. Yet we’re glad it was done. Artists need an audience, we need to be glad that they do what they do.

Many of us can be artists. But not all. Why? The harsh kick of reality, the cold and merciless universe, the primal need to survive. For us to survive and thrive as a species, we need problem people. Problem-solvers - the other high quest of creativity. We need inventors to make our future better. We need carers and science people to figure out vaccines. We need maths people to make rockets work. We need maintainers that will unblock industrial sewage lines. We need people to keep the power plants open and bury fizzing uranium underground . We need people to make robots to take out trash and, harsh as it true, we need some people to be robots. At least until the AI utopia.

So who should do what role? Are we born into our categories: artists, problem-solvers, maintainers, robots? I’m still not sure how malleable our preferences for work are. I’ve been struggled with this question for years. Can artists be made? I would say the unifying trait between artisty and problem-solving is creativity. These are fields where people realise their creativity. Artists use their creativity for expression, to move and challenge. Problem-solvers use their creativity for science, and invention, and maths, and finding and solving new problems.

The world of work and motivation is a rabbit-hole, so let me rather come back to one clarifying question: who should be artists?

And I think I have the answer. Steve Martin gave me the answer.
He has a quote: Be so good they can’t ignore you. The price of admission for becoming an artist is excellence. Sheer, bleeding excellence. Art of a certain standard requires sacrifice. Other people are transporting trash and unblocking toilets to allow you to engage in this full time. You have to be excellent. You have to be so good that we elevate you and say “go and make art for the rest of us”. (I could rewrite this essay and replace “artists” with “problem-solvers”. Problem-solving is also a privilege, it also requires you to be excellent.)

Because art, like problem-solving, helps everyone. Until that day when no one has to be an accountant or a a plumbers or a driver or a maintainer - art is one of those things that makes life worthwhile for all.

Excellence is not hard to spot, although it’s certainly hard to attain. Either you must be incredibly gifted, which means you got lucky. Or you must work incredibly hard, and if you are able to do this you are also lucky. Artists are lucky, but talented or no, they are required to make great sacrifices to be excellent. Talent that does not work cannot be excellent.

Be careful what you wish for. We deify the greatest artists, but we must also acknowledge how unhappy they often look. Amy Winehouse, Miles Davis, Van Gogh, Edgar Allan Poe. Drinkers, drug addicts, deeply troubled people. Sometimes great art comes out of this unhappiness. Sometimes the expectation of excellence, the high standards artists hold, the public scrutiny, drive them to misery. It’s never a simple story. (I think the link between mental illness and artists is made too simple - but it’s a topic for another day.)

So what about the rest of us?

There is good news. Some of us were never meant to be artists. We might be problem-solvers or crafts-people or something else entirely. Neat categories for proclivities are impossible.

So while not everyone should be paid artists, we are all permitted to pursue artistry in our lives. This is an essential pursuit.

Not everyone wants to be an artist. Many people are very happy doing what they do. They don’t need Neil Gaiman telling them to make good art - that message is for artists. They are happy to admire art made by great artists. Or to make art on the side, without any need for recognition. To throw notes, or words, or colours together for the quiet joy that this brings.

We are all creative but we’re not all artists.