Artists and Fame

Fame is a funny thing. Some people have so much talent it just lands upon them. Their accessibility is irrelevant. Whatever they do, they just hit it, and hordes of admirers either get it, or wish they did and imagine they will if they keep trying. At all costs, those admirers must not admit that it is beyond them. They must follow the pack. That's fine. It is the pack mentality. That's how masses work.

The problem arises when the artists don't have the good fortune to have their talent seized upon like that. When it is down to them to push their wares, to fight for a public to love them. Then they have three choices.

1. To keep pulping their heads against the wall, trying to sell their minority wares to an oblivious audience.

Or:

2. To chase that audience and give them what they want.

Or:

3. Just keep on doing what they do, for the love of it, because it is the only honest way forward, the only one which is true to themselves and their vision.

I do not advise either 1 or 2.

Number 1 will only bring pain and a sense of failure.

Number 2 is far worse. Number 2 will lead an artist to compromise his* art. He will be forced down the road of populism. He will mould his work to appeal to the demands of saleability, will paint what the gallery wants to display, write what the publisher thinks there is a market for. The artist will spread himself to appeal in dilution to the largest possible audience. He will cease to be himself, but will be a product of his anticipated fanbase. His art will cease to be.

By taking option 3, the artist will more than likely have limited success. However, if he is truly in it to express what lies within and must out, success will be irrelevant. An artist who works only to receive adulation is primarily an egoist and could achieve his goals without his art. One who does it only for money is something else. What is important is not how many people you can touch and what you can make out of it, but how deeply you can touch them and what they can take from it. For that the work has purpose even with a limited following.

Wolfgang Koeppen said, in interview:

'Was ich mir wünsche: dass durch mein Schreiben eine Änderung von Leben, von Denken, von Bewusstsein einträte bei irgendjemand und sich diese wieder auf einen anderen übertragen würde.'

That's my kind of writer. One who subscribes to the slow process of passing some kind of information to a single reader, who will then pass it on to someone else, spreading change slowly but profoundly. It is not about stimulating millions of sycophants to go into paroxysms over your grand words in a frenzied outburst of fashion-following. It's about going in deep. And staying there.

*Substitute the pronoun of your choice in all such cases