A Theory as to Why Art is Created
The word art in the title of this essay is not just referring to the plastic and visual arts but also literary and music, however the main focus will be on literary arts.
There is a common reason given for the creation of art, often used by artists, which is that they are compelled. The finer the art it seems, the more strongly compelled one is. Craftspeople are rarely compelled but artists, always.
The Problem with Compulsion
This focus on compulsion is an incorrect and partial understanding of artistic creation. Obviously if you were compelled to do something that would be an example of mental instability, someone who is compelled to write is suffering from a neurosis of some sort or perhaps worse. Indeed there is a Creative Compulsive Disorder http://creativecompolsive.blogspot.com/p/creative-compulsive-disorder.htmlb but this is not what most people mean when they say they feel compelled to create.
The Experience of Creation is Intoxicating
Aside from those who create for money, some of whom may be among the finest of any art, mostly the reason why people create anything is for the experience of the creation. First comes the conception of what will be created, and then the actualization of the primary idea, which actualization brings with it numerous other ideas unknown until the point of working through the points uncovered by that initial motivation.
One creates for the feeling of creation, for the feeling of having the thoughts one does when creating, for the feeling of expression, for the exercise of the mental sense that is required in the same way that one may like to run really fast or to swim in a turbulent sea. Just as such experiences reward the body, one wants to create art for the experiences that reward the mind.
A person who is compelled to write needs help! A person who writes for the experience of their mind working is doing it for enjoyment, stretching their mind in the same way that a mountain climber stretches their limbs.
This is one of the reasons why people begrudge paying artists for their art, because people know that there is an inherent reward in having had the experience of creating the art. They know it and often resent it, the same way someone might resent a good looking person or an athlete for their skills.
They know it because of the natural intuition that something so profound when viewed, heard, or read must have been even more profound in the creation.
One pays for the distribution of the art
Of course they do not consider all the other things one does to make money off the art are not actually things that are needed for the experience to be had for the artist, but only for the experience to be shared with the public.
Nobody who has written an extraordinary poem is required to go through the trouble of sending it to dozens of poetry magazines in the hopes of being published. Or talking to editors or going to a recital. That part is the labor. The artist is paid for whatever effort they need to undertake to distribute what they made.
If people were compelled to create, and one did not want to pay them for their creations there are two possible interpretations
- They would like to take advantage of the mentally ill (the compulsion to create is internal)
- They want to profit off of slavery (the compulsion is external)
When you create for the Experience of creation itself, there are many benefits to this.
The Benefit of the Created Work to the Creator
The Primary benefit (aside from any financial one) is that the creation exists afterwards, and is thus available as a form of mnemonic for the creator. They can revisit and re-experience that sensation of creation that would otherwise have been transitory.
You can relive having the thoughts as visions, although not as strong as revelatory as the original, but as time goes on the mnemonic is affected by that passage, new interpretations to the originating idea can be mixed in and strengthen the work. The artifact that is produced by the experience of creation offers a powerful benefit to the artist, and also to others who are able to experience second-hand what the artist experienced much closer.
Wish I wrote That
This part and the next few parts will focus on creation and the experience thereof as it applies directly to writers, because the things under discussion are more easy to understand when dealing with writers or more commonly encountered with authors.
The author who says I wish I’d written that is not wishing that they had made some perfect expression of a thought that they had often had in a less than perfect form, although this is often how it is described, they are in fact wishing that they had the experience of having the thought in its perfected form.
They are wishing that they had the thoughts that allowed them to write what was written, because they suspect that the quality of the experience that the real writer of the thought must have had was very great, as they can feel the lesser experience that have as a reader, and are envious.
Reading something you wished you wrote is like learning a friend went on a little trip over the weekend, had great sex, got stoned, ate a wonderful meal, did all sorts of exciting things.
The wish to have written something can often lead to plagiarism
Fitting something that someone else has written into something you are writing is sort of like reverse-engineering a complicated bit of code.
If you want the experience this is a way to get it. And then in getting it you can feel that it is yours, you can forget that you took the output of someone (the material remain of their experience) as a prompt to your own.
This can be a lead-in to plagiarism.
Also, because thought begets thought, if you drop a bit of written matter into your writing and follow it into the next thoughts prompted by the borrowed text you are using it in the same way that an opium user might take opium to provoke a vision.
The Benefit of the Published Work to the Writer
As noted going through the difficulties of publishing has no potential benefit for the writer other than monetary (Henry Miller and his generation evidently had groupies but that seems unlikely), and hopefully those monetary benefits are great enough to allow the writer to write more by not having to have another source of income.
For those who have a comfortable source of income, given the difficulty of finding financial success from writing it might not be considered worthwhile to make the effort, as it becomes easier to do publish work in some form — Amazon or Medium being an example. It becomes reasonable that some people who would not otherwise take the time to try to financially benefit off their writing do so, but as this still requires effort in some way it follows that many will drop it and not continue because while they may enjoy writing they probably don’t enjoy publishing.
Art as the Opiate of the Artist
When readers read the work they experience the thoughts of the writer filtered through their perceptions. Of course reading it will not be as powerful as having written it in the same way that watching a child birth is not as powerful as giving birth to a child. But the writer is also a reader and thus can take the lesser experience of reading to prompt their writing.
This connection between reading and writing is commonly remarked on, albeit perhaps not with the view we provide here — to quote Stephen King “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.. reading is the creative center of a writer’s life…you cannot hope to sweep someone else away by the force of your writing until it has been done to you.”
Reading is an important source of the fuel needed for the writer to create their art. The same pertains to all artists and their respective arts. One needs to experience second hand the ideas that the art provokes not just to prompt the creation of new art, but to impart the techniques that model the experience and thoughts that the art one admires gives.
It would be truly strange to find a great painter who did not spend their time studying the paintings of others.
To Speak Meaningfully About Inspiration
These things were obliquely indicated in a previous article
As it is our habit to indirectly point at things until the time is best for a direct handling of the matter.
In the section fo the article dealing with requirements for artists to speak meaningfully about art it was stated that aside from other requirements artists needed to consider the following two properties when talking meaningfully about art
1. Things that I can use in making what I want
2. Things that I must go against in making what I want
as well as the basic 4 properties that everyone should consider
1. Art that is good and to your taste
2. Art that is bad and to your taste
3. Art that is good and not to your taste
4. Art that is bad and not to your taste.
This was of course in relation to speaking meaningfully about art, but it also applies in the making of art for the artist. The more intellectual structure is required for the art the more these things apply as a feedback function that runs in the artists mind when making the art — the editor within.
This Essay was written mainly by Illuminati Ganga Agent 13
This and other essays of criticism can be found on Luminasticity’s criticism Page https://medium.com/luminasticity/criticism/home
