A tiring day. I awoke late but early too after a very stressful evening and panicked night of semi-conscious worry, the worst sort of night terror. I've been wrestling with a social dilemma.
It concerned my art group and made me think, what do I really think of my art? Do I like it? Do I dislike it? I can identify good points, bad points, the message, the feeling. Am I proud of it? Am I ashamed of it?
Art is communication. To be proud or ashamed of a conversation seems insane, yet, art critics seek to praise or deprecate just that. How should the artist feel?
Half of the time I am proud of it and will happily talk about it. Half of the time I am ashamed of my art and don't want to explain it or talk about it. My social dilemma was a venomous rant by the leader of my art group insisting that members, and I in particular, bring in a painting and explain it. The event was theoretically voluntary.
I solved the problem by taking a god's view, a view in which I see even myself in the third person. In such a view, the affairs of humans are of minor importance. I can simply decide the pros and cons to an event. It is better for an artist to promote art than hide it so the solution is simple. An artist should be proud if his work, irrespective of how he, his peers, or his critics really feels about it. That sentence itself shows the amusing irrationality of the artist.
Thus the good artist must see room for improvement, yet feel pride. An artist must be a salesman, and a paranoiac. A human, and a god. The more feeble the man, the more improvements can be made, and the greater the god the more divine and glorious and perfect the ultimate result will be.
