Today Vi Hart told me of a thought by the great recently deceased anthropologist Ted Carpenter, which she paraphrased as “Artists don’t address audiences, they create audiences”. I spent some time this evening tracking down the original statement itself:
“Artists don’t address themselves to audiences; they create audiences. That artist talks to himself out loud. If what he has to say is significant, others hear & are affected.” — Edmund Carpenter, in his foreword to ‘They Became What They Beheld’
When I think about Vi’s work, or the works of Picasso, or Woolf, or Schoenberg, or Louise Bourgeois, or Jackson Pollock, or other true originals, I realize that this is a nice way to describe the difference between art and entertainment. Entertainment attracts an audience by making people comfortable — by showing people what they were already expecting to see.
Art creates an audience by making people uncomfortable — by teaching a new way of seeing.
“That artist talks to himself out loud. If what he has to say is significant, others hear & are affected.”
Perhaps in this same sense, the best bloggers create audiences too. 🙂
That’s a very nice thing to say. 🙂
I agree but only to some extent. Many would-be artists use the catch-phrase, “This is my art, you don’t have to like it” to try and get away with really lazy artisanship.
To not go over a written piece to fix grammatical errors, to not craft, really craft, good poetry or a play, to not compose a painting, is not art. It’s laziness that’s trying to purport to be art.
A true artist takes the time and the effort to do what he/she does, not just well or excellently but brilliantly!
Deepak, I totally agree, and I don’t think anything I said contradicts what you are saying. It takes work to bring something good into the world.