Famous artists

The notion of famous artists is similar to the notion we have of famous anything. It’s closely tied in with the fandangle world of celebrity, being recognized and been lauded and applauded. In one way there’s nothing wrong with that. We all entertain these ideas and think such an existence would be great.

Maybe I’m snobbish when I think of artists. Artists are supposed to be people who bring something into being, through a combination of looking into themselves and reflection on their external environment. Famous artists are something of an anomaly.

I sometimes wonder would fame and the arrival of vast recognition compromise that original integrity that drove you to the work in the first instance. Would people’s expectations stifle that creative seed or originality that became the catalyst for your new found fame? So be careful what you wish for.

We are all artists. It sounds a silly cliché, but the reason its silly is because it’s true, we are all artists in our own right. The fact we exist and interact with the world at all makes us an artist. We could just as easily say that we are all people, self evident, even true? But that statement tells us nothing new. So what makes some artists famous? The same as that which makes anyone famous. Media attention, plaudits, recognition of talent by others.

Those are some of the high brow reasons as to why fame comes to rest on some shoulders and not others. Then there is the lesser more clay-like reasons, notoriety, doing something different, and originality for the sake of originality. Just as we state we are all artists, in the same breath we could almost say we are all famous in our right. We have all the same degree of general access to the internet, to you-tube, to blogging, to the means of getting our art out there.

But clearly, I can hear you say, we are not all equally famous, which could lead us to conclude that none of us are really famous. There is no democracy in all of this. Fame is fleeting, we are told this time and time again, yet so many of us value fame and the joy of being instantly recognized far above everything else, even to the point of it being at the expense of everything else.

The question we have to ask ourselves is why. Why bother? Famous artists. Sounds like wet water. Isn’t it all worthless, if their art fails to touch people in some real and tangible way at the end of the day? Fame is a by-product. It will come and it will go, just like our successes and failure and as the wise old adage advises, we would do well to treat those two imposters with equal contempt.

Who says if we’re famous or not and who cares. It matters very little. Michael Jackson was a famous artist, but in the light of his death, its apparent that now it matters very little to him one way or the other. He has gone the way of all before him, rich and poor alike, and the same fate awaits each of us. Fame is indeed fleeting.

When we talk of famous artists, the same names normally come to mind, - Picasso, Dali, Andy Warhol or another one of the famous artists - Alberto Giacometti. We can see how fame affected each of them individually and influenced their own artistic output, and without a doubt it had a big influence.

I think of Van Gogh, a man who upon his death by suicide rose to fame. How much of this newfound fame was on account of his life and more importantly the nature of his death, and how much was actually down to the actual merit of his work. The question is purely academic as we will never really know, but on another level it’s a very important one to ask. He would probably not even be able to begin to relate to the industry and merchandising that has grown up around his name since his death. The bronze statues proudly emblazoned in the small town squares of the southern France hamlets that he frequented and painted in his short life. Never far from the wrath and suspicion of the local population who often persecuted him, now hail him as one of their own. How fickle people can become, especially when there is money involved. It was probably a blessing for his own sake and ours that he was never ‘discovered’ while he lived. He would possibly just give up painting and moved back to his native Holland to resume his studies for the religious ministry.

Fame and its influence on the artist and the art are a post modernist problem. There is no one easy answer. The answers are being worked out in our time, and even then they are a constantly moving target, never set in stone. The only thing we can say for certain is that they make uneasy bedfellows, fame and art, and when the come together it’s rarely to the benefit of the art.