With that particular cocktail [stress, vulnerability, potential for little reward] you will find people getting drunk, cracking up, falling apart, getting depressed and taking drugs.
How is this different from being a high-stress computer analyst? Or a soldier? Or a single parent in a crappy neighborhood?
I think the trouble is that people expect famous people to be better people, and they're not. Famous artist people are just as prone to idiotic shenanigans as anybody else, except they get to call it something else.
How is this different from being a high-stress computer analyst? Or a soldier? Or a single parent in a crappy neighborhood?
Lots of things are stressful. But they don't self select for sensitive people with limited social support. Which, I will argue is more true of artists than computers analysts, soldiers or single parents.
Lots of things are stressful. But they don't self select for sensitive people with limited social support.
Your definition of an artist is extremely limited, then. I have a very strong sense that Michael Bay, e.g., is neither a particularly sensitive person nor lacking in social support.
(He does get points for being able to make fun of himself. But only three points.)
Also I suspect a lot of groups besides artists have above average probabilities of combining stress, sensitivity and lack of social support. Those active on the political and religious fringes perhaps? And I'll bet that is the start of a pretty long list.
I have a very strong sense that Michael Bay, e.g., is neither a particularly sensitive person nor lacking in social support.
Without getting into the main argument one way or another, I do think calling Michael Bay an artist is pushing it just a little.
Without getting into the main argument one way or another, I do think calling Michael Bay an artist is pushing it just a little.
Oh, come on! He's remaking Friday the 13th!
Says who? Where is the central registry of artists? Do they have a secret guild? More secret than the DGA, I mean, of which Bay is presumably a member?
If you define artists only as people who make Earthshattering Works O' Genius, And Suffer Therefrom, then of course you're going to find a correlation of genius with mental suffering. You have literally defined your criteria for artistry to include those attributes!
Next hot topic: is there such a thing as bad art?
That is, if it's bad, does it count as art?
If so, doesn't that render the label "art" as practically useless?
sits back and makes popcorn
I suppose you could say Bay is an Artist in that what he does is artistic in nature...that is, it is not steel-working, it is making magical pictures float in the air on a giant screen.
On the other hand, you could call him a 'hack'...in that what he does makes me want to hack him apart with a machete for the betterment of all mankind.
