Selfishness in art: remarks to a friend
1998

I think it is altogether possible that there would be no art without selfishness. After all, what is art but an embellishment, a bauble, a pretty thing hanging from our tree of life? We certainly do not need it (for pure survival). Art is made by people who do not do normal, utilitarian things. Instead they presume to think that the games they play, figures they make, pictures they draw are important. Artists spend all day in their studio painting or playing while the rest of the people are mopping floors, teaching, doctoring, making automobiles, planting corn, whatever.....and there is the artist alone painting a titanium white square on a white, gessoed canvas (its all about "surface"). As Richard Serra said, (actually, referring to architecture, to which some of his work has been compared) "If it is useful it ain’t art."

Clearly, art is an integral part of almost any society, certainly so-called "civilized" societies. Perhaps we can draw a reasonable parallel with sports. Who really needs sports? Do we need to watch the S.F. 49'rs play the Dallas Cowboys in order to survive? By the same token do we need to see another Jasper Johns beer can serigraph for survival? Of course not. Well then isn't it egoistically presumptuous for all those sorts of people to think that what they do is important? I mean, don't we need to have some inkling of purpose, importance, significance in order to do something? The professional athlete rationalizes his play as "entertainment" (and a means of a handsome income). Entertainment is the last thing a real artist thinks about. Nor would he prostitute himself for pecuniary gain at the risk of his art.

But on a different tack.....the artist has things going on in his head which are, assuming we are talking about a real artist, quite unusual and as often as not, quite inscrutable, and often disagreeable, to the public and even his friends and family (witness the recent "Sensation" show at the Brooklyn Museum inviting the contumely of both Giulliani and Clinton). He is driven to express these things either through his music painting or poetry. He has to work alone (excluding the group arts -- chamber music, dance, theater etc.) so he goes off to his space to do this thing which is totally unnecessary (for the survival of the species). This behavior necessitates a high degree of selfishness (egoism). I mean, it is one thing to say to one's friends and family, "Well, see you later, I'm going down to the church to cook dinner for the homeless," or "See you later, I'm going back to the office to do some more research on that Exxon oil spill," und so weiter. The artist says, "See you later, I'm going to the studio; I'm working on the relationship between the ocular synapses and the actuality of the transmogrification of pigment on canvas." And off he goes with a seriousness equal to any doctor, priest or school teacher.

But I am still being self-deprecatingly cynical aren't I? Why would Oscar Wilde say he had never heard of a happily married artist? I don't think he said that simply because, being gay, he could not imagine being married under any circumstances; no, I think he was referring to what my father's last wife said in that film; his music was a relentlessly demanding mistress. This is why I am so adamant in support of (your) art for art’s sake. You want to paint some very weird things, things which most people are not going to understand and/or appreciate. This REQUIRES selfishness of a high order. You have to be convinced that what you are doing is important, worthwhile, more than a bauble, more than an inconsequential expenditure of time -- when you finish at Yale you will begin the long arduous process of being a real artist; six, eight, ten hours a day painting, day after day, alone, just you and that piece of canvas stretched in front of you. You will have to believe in your semi-abstractions, abstractions, whatever....your translucent figures, your craters of catastrophe. You will have to be convinced that what you are doing is significant. Don't you think this is a kind of selfishness when, with your extraordinary brain, you could just as well get a law degree from Yale and be out in the streets advocating for millions of disenfranchised people around the world, or you could be a doctor or whatever.....I just think it requires an enormous selfishness on our part to think that the melodies we make, the pictures we paint, the photographs we take, are important. I am not a real artist like you so I hesitate.....to speak as an artist.

I do know however, (enough of playing the devil's advocate and cynic) that art is essential, perhaps even for survival (there are countless stories of men in solitary confinement… prisoners, lost in the arctic, shivering in the trenches at Verdun, etc, who, in order to go on living, resorted to remembering songs, verses, images). I do know that the world will be a better place when your paintings are gracing more walls than those of your studio, that you have things to say to all of us which will enlarge our scope of things. You will challenge us to look and think in different ways. But, believe me, you won't do any of this without being selfish, or to put it a bit more generously, you will need to guard your time carefully. Of course, an artist can lead a more or less normal life, but the odds are that his spouse and friends won't have much of a clue about how he makes his art and possibly not much clue as to what he is saying in it.... surely few will really understand the preciousness of his time. After all, most jobs can endure a little interruption. The artist is like the heart surgeon in the middle of sewing on a new aorta, no, that is a purely mechanical thing; the artist is more like the emergency room doctor trying to keep a victim of multiple gunshots alive, the lungs are punctured, spine broken, spleen ruptured...only total focus will allow for survival. The artist is bringing a new life into the world which is just as fraught with the possibility of failure as the multiple gunshot victim. Just when success is at hand there is a knock on the door, GONE like the lightening is the inspiration which might have made a masterpiece.