The Sleep of Reason

How many artist statements do we read that contain phrases such as “the painting was telling me to …”, or “the photograph spoke to to me”, or “I knew when the work was finished when the sculpture revealed itself to me.” etc?

The chemist doesn’t need to inflate the excitement of their discovery by exclaiming “the test tube spoke to me!” but the artist, desperately attempting to emphasize the importance of their latest masterpiece struggles to imbue it with paranormal qualities.

Artists and the general public will say “don’t be silly, it’s just a turn of phrase”, but why is such a turn of phrase so especially virulent in artistic circles? We are in the second decade of the 21st century, surely it is about time artists let go of the frivolous belief that their uniquely creative endeavours are so wondrously magical that they can cause an opinion to spring forth from their easel or that it is the artist and only the artist who can hear these murmurings emanating from an etching.

For the artist to repetitively regurgitate these hallucinations reeks of desperation, foolishness and for all that extravagant posturing, a fundamental self-doubt. In 1799 Francisco Goya in his Los Caprichos series of prints railed against the absurdity of myth and superstition but as for artists today, the capacity for self-deception seems unabated.

Why do so many artists avert their eyes from the blatant truth that in making a mark they are solely responsible for its existence? Any interpretations or explanations by the artist are purely the result of the artists intellect, cultural biases and imagination.

The explanation of the need for artistic expression is not to be found in the world of make-believe, the mystical and the spiritual but in the far more profound and astonishing desire to grasp the very nature of our circumstances.

Until artists and their support-cast stop practising this mistaken belief in some sort of “artistic other-worldliness”, why should anybody take them seriously? No wonder art and artists now belong in the entertainment and celebrity section of society. Shallow, delusional and with nothing substantial to contribute, they attract our attention for the same voyeuristic reasons as does a car accident. We stare at the scene with a mixture of excitement and dread, think how lucky we are not to be involved and move on.

I once thought that art had a fundamental role to play in society. It was part of the humanities and had equal status with the sciences in the exploration and understanding of our world.

It’s now depressingly clear that the function of art in our society has no more of a role to play than does homeopathy in the medical profession. Just cutesy claptrap, utterly discredited and so diluted with pretentiousness and mediocrity as to be inert.