You can read this article here: http://www.maryellenmark.com/text/magazines/rolling%20stone/920S-000-004.html . It’s not bad, but I’m not here to discuss the merits/ failures of Anton LaVey. I remember this article from when it came out - the bored/ unimpressed look on LaVey’s face as he discussed how the world has gone to shit, but not in a “Satanic” way (he’s very Nietzschean). President Clinton was being dragged through the mud at the time for sexing up his intern, which LaVey believed made his (LaVey’s) job very difficult: how are you supposed to be the devil incarnate if the very symbol of good, decency, morality, etc (ie: Clinton) is nought but corruption? (Politicians being liars and cheats is nothing new, but you get the point I hope.)
Well, I have a similar bone to pick, or at least chew on.
Every morning while sipping coffee, I flick through my tumblr feed. It is all art-related stuff, some new, some old. It takes me about 15-20 minutes to see dozens of images. I click the heart when I like stuff, I wish there was a frowny face for what I don’t. The accounts I ‘follow’ are mostly individual artists. I am one too.
As an individual artist, we try to follow our muse and make wonderful works. We hope these works will help us leave behind our day-jobs so we can focus on making great works all the time. It works for some, and others make art purely with $$$ in mind - each to their own (though some of it is soooo bad and sooo obviously made for $$$, but hey!, if you WANT to buy that, you’re welcome to it).
Anyhow, it occurred to me that some people do the same thing with my art: flick through a newsfeed, give my work (on a screen I believe to be way-too-fucking-small-to-see-it-properly) a quick glance, then move on. I am most grateful for those who actually follow my stuff, it’s always a surprise.
But think about: a quick glance.
I’ve made something that’s weird, unusual, ridiculous - and it’s appraisal is over in a glance.
The Interwebs is FLOODED with images of weirdness, from art to silly pets to nature’s oddness to people behaving strangely. I’m not sure young people (in their teens/ twenties) today realise how in the early days of the Net how weird it was to realise through net-browsing how strange people actually are. We always thought others were nutty - now we had concrete proof, ranging from the Peter Pan guy (he’s still around) to goatse’s horrendous arse, to rotten.com challenging us not to spew, etc. But now it’s EVERYWHERE on the Net, it’s common place, heck there’s dozens of websites dedicated to it and you get bombarded by yr friends via f’book, etc.
It makes it hard to be a “weird” artist.
ESPECIALLY in the word we live in now - which I don’t think is that strange. Everyone’s always saying things are getting worse. No they’re not. 1) The Mongols ain’t coming and the Black Death is not in your streets. 2) You just have instant news from around the world, and weird news/ bad news gets more attention. 3) There is no “normal level of normalcy” that people/societies have ever existed at or that we’re ever likely to reach - just because white-people-world is mostly at peace at the moment it does not automatically imply that’s how it will always be. But the world sure does SEEM weird, since we have instant access to world-wide weird news.
And suddenly: your art ain’t all that weird. It only gets a glance.
And it’s “hard to be weird in a world so goddamn strange”.
I’m not so much complaining as musing, I make art because I can’t not make art. I’ve had some success with it and at times some fame with it, but none of those are motivating factors - though the $$$ would be most welcome.
But yeah, it’s most certainly hard to be a weird artist in a world so god-damn weird.
(ps: me on tumblr: https://gadzooxtian.tumblr.com/ AND https://surrealangelcomic.tumblr.com/ )
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