So if you’ve been following my musings here for a while you know that I’ve written from time to time about my creative process or lack there-of. I’ve been thinking a lot recently for my thesis about art and what separates ‘great art’ from other art, and also great artists from other creatives. I’m in the middle of reading a book called Picasso’s War about the painting of Guernica. One of the most famous and important works of art from the 20th century, the painting was done by Picasso just weeks after the destruction of the town of Gernika in Northern Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Picasso was already a world famous artist by the time he began work on Guernica, but part of me has to wonder if he didn’t know this would be his most important piece when he completed it. From it’s inception it was obviously going to be his largest painting (it is in fact huge, 11 feet tall and 25 feet long) but I wonder if he didn’t step back when it was finished and feel his own heart skip a beat as he looked over it. And while I’m sure his personality and arrogance would compel him to claim full credit for it’s creation, I wonder how much he realized he was speaking on behalf of a country and people torn apart by a horrible civil war. Guernica is a painting with a message, it is intended to deeply affect and move the viewer. Picasso may have kept mum about the exact meanings of all of the imagery in the painting, but there are no wasted or whimsical brush strokes in this piece. And as the eyes of the bull look out at the viewer, one can’t help but feel moved to action. Just what that action is though is left up to the viewer.

I also recently watched a documentary called ‘Danielson: a Familie movie’ about a musician named Daniel Smith. Where Picasso was a giant in the art world, Smith lives and creates his art and music largely in obscurity. However it is quite clear that the same level of creative fire burns inside of Smith as it did in Picasso. But where Picasso’s art found a broad and eager audience, Smith remains unknown. What makes the film great is it doesn’t paint a picture of Smith as a tragic hero (even as Smith’s music career stalled, he was helping to launch the career of his close friend Sufjan Stevens). Rather it shows Smith as a true artist who creates because of a bursting forth from his soul. That is to say, Smith creates because he can’t NOT create. Even with an audience of just himself and God, Smith must remain true to the movement of the spirit through his heart and head and hands. It would be easy to cast Smith aside as crazy because of his single minded passion to create; and while that is what makes some of his music inaccessible it is also what gives it a distinctiveness and a uniqueness that sets it apart from the work of other artists. One of my favorite scenes from the movie is Smith trying to explain to a radio DJ the relationship between his art and his faith. While Smith has a clear grasp on it (and it made perfect sense to me) the non-religious DJ found much of what Smith was saying to be silly, if not crazy.

So what do these two have in common? What do a dead Spanish master and an indie musician from New Jersey have in common? I think both of them have that compulsion all true artists have to express themselves through creation. Picasso could have joined the protesters who were marching in the streets of Paris after hearing about the bombing of Gernika. Daniel Smith could get a ‘real job’ and stop touring. But neither of these artists considered it for a moment. In response to the world around them they chose to create. And they don’t make ‘safe’ art, they make art that must be dealt with. Art that raises questions about what it means to have convictions, to believe in something, to exist. The reason I think some, if not most, great creative minds seem to be a little crazy is they see the world differently from others and they also respond to it differently from others. I think it is the curse of all artists to see the world through a lens that few others understand; and it is the degree to which that vision of the world is different from ours and the degree to which they are able to explain it to us through their work that determines our willingness to accept their vision, or reject them as insane.

Filed under: life by Jonathan