Are artists outstanding?

© Guillermo Labarca

Are artists different from other professionals, such as doctors, engineers, carpenters, firemen and so on…, aside of the obvious differences that each profession imply in their aims and functions? Writers, painters, musicians, photographers, actors, etc… seem to think so, they seem to consider their own activity as totally different from any other profession, when listening to them it seems they feel themselves as the link between some absolute truth, the rich world of ideas and feelings, and human beings. I think that, such perception of themselves and their activities make them feel compeled to transmit their perceptions in a unique, outstanding, original, exemplary fashion, in other words, they feel they need to be genius.

The world around us supports such conception of the artistic work, art critics, museums (not all, but most), galleries, theatres, art fairs, that is to say, art managers also share this visión and confirm the image artists have of themselves and making them achieve it. Such idea is present from the moment someone decides to dedícate to art and it gets into all the activities of the schools where those crafts are learnt. Therefore, the artists never compare themselves with other professions, on the one hand and, on the other hand, they live in a permanent state of frustration.

There are only a few artists how are aware there are outstading individuals in every profession, such as Eiffel in Engineering, Flemming or Salk in Medicine, Keynes or Tinbergen in Economy, etc… However, most of them do not reach an artist’s level of excelence, and many of them are really great architects, doctors, judges or public servants, but this fact does not drive them to frustration for not being a genius. One more thing that artists do not consider is the stadistical fact that, in any field, genius are very scarce, at some point, one or two within a generation, at some other points, for unknown reasons, tens of them within one generation, a fact that Goethe found very intriguing. In anyway, the proportion of geniuses is always tiny. Having the responsibility of being a genius is a heavy burden, so, it’s not rare to see that many artists live in a continuous anguish and in endemic neurosis, at least at the very beginning of their careers. Fortunately, many recover their common sense when ageing.

The significant thing is that this hasn’t always been so, it’s an idea we inherited from Romanticism at the end of the 19th century. There’s many things we owe to Romanticism, it has open up new horizons in many aspects of our social and cultural life, but it has also meant a heavy burden that artists can not easily get rid of, being an intermediary between the Gods and the man is a whole lot of a responsibility.