Art That Goes Nowhere

If there’s one I notice in upstart artists above all others, it is an attempt to be increasingly obscure.
All too often, I will wander into the art gallery at my school to see work of such a kind that I can tell the artist was simply trying too hard to be deep or unique, forsaking true depth in the process. I viewed an extremely disconcerting piece last year that consisted of a deer skin stretched out on a plank, with a video of someone repeatedly drilling holes into a deer carcass playing above it.
Unsettling, to be sure, but I also instantly felt that there was little more to the piece than that, regardless of how much effort may have been put into it. In the modern world of art, it seems that people starting out have a “free for all” mentality that can be extremely stunting to true artistic talent. And this is by no means limited to visual arts, I see this in writing as well.
The bottom line to me is, art should be made for a reason greater than “being art”, unless you happen to be a member of the Dadaist movement. The Dadaist movement is something to look up on your own, if you are not familiar with it, but a ten cent definition is that their intent is more or less to make fun of ill-defined art by creating parodies of ill-defined art, which in turn, has confused the art world more, by causing people to create “serious” Dadaist art, an homage of a parody.
You can instantly see the problem. When you have no idea what art is to you, art becomes meaningless, a parody within a parody. There is no point to creating something like this, not even to yourself.
As I said, this is not limited to visual art. I have read experimental writings that read like blogs on speed, filled with words on everything- but no thought. They are empty, meaningless words, sometimes beautiful, sometimes ugly, but completely devoid of thought. This is artless art that is trying so hard to be art, it actually manages to fail, and fail badly, without a hint of Dadaist irony.
It is one thing to throw yourself into your art with passion, it is another thing not to let your passion go anywhere. In frustration, you can draw spirals endlessly, or you can take that frustration, observe it, and try to recapture it in a form that explores your thoughts, a sort of exercise not only of learning to analyze your own emotions (for all art comes from a distinctly emotional point of view), but also to make yourself a better artist, in whatever medium you work with.
I am not saying you must always have a deeper meaning for your art- one of my favorite books is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which has gleefully avoided deeper analysis for over a hundred years because it exists simply as a work of nonsense. But all of the same, this nonsense (which is in fact a genre form), does have some thought behind it. All throughout Alice’s ridiculous journey are subtle jabs at Victorian social order, capital punishment, and the school system, along with some math and a fair amount of wordplay. Alice may not be a “deep” work, in the way we are used to thinking of “deep”, but it is still a highly sophisticated and intelligent work.
While Lewis Carroll was not writing with a clear-cut motive, the intelligence inherent in his work also shows he was not simply throwing his art up against the wall and hoping it stuck. Aspiring artists in every medium seem to misconstrue the ideas. If you are to set out to create- create something worth creating, put some real thought and effort into it. Do not simply throw something against the artistic wall and try to ascribe a deeper meaning to it. Meaning you attach in hindsight does not create a meaningful work, regardless of the amount of time you may have spent on it. Rather, create with a sense of meaning, and even if you do not ascribe some kind of deep philosophy to your piece, and your effort will show through, making your work have true merit.

Just Listen

One of the most under-discussed aspects of being a writer is the need to listen. In fact, this goes for artists in any medium. Writing, like any art, is the attempt to reflect life. If you do not engage with life, then your art will be lifeless, and if you do not listen to human beings, who your work is about and aimed towards, then you, quite simply, have no business holding a pen.

Of course, there is a problem with listening, many people are less enlightened than an aspiring writer believes himself or herself to be. People are not always going to grasp your work, even if you are writing about common things. Naturally not everyone is going to get it when you are writing about European politics using psychedelic cannibal monkeys as allegory. My mother, bless her, reads my poetry with a look of confusion, and questions me endlessly about what the fantasy aspects in my short stories mean. I have overheard her saying to people, “My daughter is a writer,” but then following it apologetically by saying, “she writes fantasy.” Listening to something like this can be discouraging, especially if you are starting out, but it is necessary and healthy. If you write work so obscure and vague that everyone raises their eyebrows in the first stanza or paragraph, it is time to rethink a strategy. As I said, art reflects life, and if the reflection is too blurred to understand, there may be more of a problem with the writer than with the audience.

This is not to say, however, that you must give up your wild imagination and only write realist two-character dramas set in highly described and mundane settings. I still write fantasy, despite my mother’s lack of enthusiasm. But I did take a note from my mother’s book and attempting to focus the fantasy, so that I could expand past the genre label. I want to be able for any reader to look at my work and simply enjoy it, and not have to apologize for the genre or imagery. That is key. If you are too caught up in self-appeal, you may be missing the point. I’ll never forget the time my friend described a story of mine enthusiastically to her family as being “a fantasy, but not like you think. It’s dark and it’s really about this man.” Whereas the genre, alone could be a turn-off to those who it doesn’t appeal to, the depth that stretched the genre was appealing to her family. Hearing my friend describe my work in such terms also changed the way I viewed my own work. I, knowing my genre limitations, used to never consider myself capable of literary writing. But the more I listened to readers, their criticisms and their compliments, I saw that I was heading down a literary path, obscure imagery and genre labeling be damned. This does not, of course, mean I have arrived, but it means that I am off to a good start by learning, not to give up on my passions, but to constantly challenge myself to listen to readers, the people who writing, after all, is for.