Look Out!! Or in...

A few days ago while reading the introduction to a book called "Legendary Artists and the Clothes They Wore" I came across the line "The job of artists is to critique culture, unload their psyches into their work, and make edifying masterpieces the rest of us can revere."

The line feels like a bit of a throwaway... an obligatory expository step on the way to the real meat of the book, but... I couldn't get it out of my head.

The sentence describes three things that artists are supposed to do. The third thing in the list, "mak[ing] edifying masterpieces the rest of us can revere," is really just a catch-all description meant to encompass any work of art which is worthy of our attention. The first two items on the list, however, are what caught my interest.

1) Critique culture.
2) Unload their psyches into their work.

I believe that this is a major distinction which divides the subject matter of art into two subsets: Looking outward and looking inward.

An artwork which critiques culture sets its sights on the world around us. The artist points their gaze outward, away from (him/her)self, and seeks to make a commentary on the society or culture that we all live in. Often this takes the form of some sort of evaluation, or illumination of something the artist feels needs to be examined more closely, and as such this type of art is often part of a cultural dialogue around issues like social change and justice. Artists whose work typically functions in this way include Banksy, Ai Wei Wei, Alice Walker, Taos artist Nikesha Breeze, and my old friend Chris Dacre, among many others. It's also true that every work of art, even those which seek exclusively to critique culture, bears the stamp of its maker, and is therefore personal to some degree.

An artwork which functions primarily as an unloading of the artist's psyche is an artwork that looks inward. This sort of work typically takes topics like emotion, romance, and mortality as its subject matter. These topics might be collected under a subject heading such as 'the fundamental experience of being human,' and might further be classified with terms such as 'psychology' and 'biography.' Artists working in this mode include Egon Schiele, Francis Bacon, Chuck Close, Tim Hawkinson, and Anton Solomoukha. 

These are broad distinctions, and I don't think they encompass all art. For one thing, painting before the advent of photography often functioned simply as a document of noteworthy people and events and this type of painting doesn't really fit into either of the above categories. Also, abstract art (which I usually think of as 'art about art,' and which I generally dislike) also defies these definitions.

And then there are the artists who transcend this distinction, either by crossing over, back and forth, between the two points of view or by defining some interzone between them. This work, I think, has the potential of being particularly powerful. A few artists that come to mind who have managed this feat are Jean-Michel Basquiat, Paul McCarthy, the amazing Marina Abramowic, and perhaps even Ingres. I count these artists as some of my favorites. Incidentally, I believe that film is very well suited to handle this sort of multi-focus crossover; after all, visual art is typically one image while a single film comprises thousands.

My favorite psychology author is the late Alice Miller. Her lifelong focus was child abuse and neglect, and the ways in which the effects of these traumas linger (often unseen) into adulthood. In her book "The Untouched Key" she traces the effects of childhood trauma in public figures such as artists Chaim Soutine and Pablo Picasso, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and dictators Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, showing how abuse and neglect they experienced in their early lives led either to great art or horrible cruelty (depending on critical factors which she does identify). According to her formulations, the work of Soutine and Picasso crossed over between the realms of the inner and the outer, even though the artists themselves were to some degree unaware of the psychological forces at play in their own art. *See below for a bit more about Alice Miller.

But, back to the dichotomy.

I'm guessing that, among the segment of the population which actually gives a shit about art, most people have a preference between art that looks inward and that which looks outward. I do. I prefer to see the psyche of the artist; I prefer work that looks inward.

It's not a strong preference; by no means will I 'write off' art that critiques culture. Some of it is amazing, and amazingly powerful. Banksy routinely makes me chuckle and sometimes makes me think about just how fucked up this world is... in ways that are funnier and more insightful than just reading the news does.

But whereas art that critiques culture is by its very nature 'timely,' dealing with issues that need to be addressed now, inward-looking art is, I believe, more 'timeless.' Questions of what it means to feel love and pain, joy and suffering and loss and death... these are questions which are for everyone, across all time.

So I will take Francis Bacon over Ai Wei Wei any day. 

It must be because I am still trying to understand my own psyche, and I look to other artists for insight and guidance. I trust the sincerity of their curiosity... about themselves. That must be why artist biographies are my favorite genre of books.

Maybe one day I will 'figure myself out,' and maybe I will, at that point, mature into someone who gravitates more to the culturally critical variety of art. It seems like a reasonable possibility. Maybe.

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I consider 'music biography,' or books that trace the careers of musicians, to be a genre which is very closely related to 'artist biography.' Among the few books that I've actually finished in the last few years are biographies of Leonardo DaVinci and Francis Bacon, as well as books about Leonard Cohen and Joy Division. In order for me to finish one of these music books, though, it needs to be well written and it needs to be about a musician (or group) that I actually like. 

I recently received in the mail a newly published book about The Sisters of Mercy, a band I like a lot because... you know, I was a teenage goth. And goddamn, is it well written, because... you know, it was written by my brother, Trevor Ristow. 

I've only had the book for about 36 hours and I'm more than half-way through it. 

I have to say... I am really proud of him. 

He self-funded the publishing and was therefore only able to print 200 copies, which sold out immediately. But there is hopefully a second printing coming soon. Click here for more info.

Nice work, Trev!

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*A bit more about Alice Miller: Her most famous book is The Drama of the Gifted Child. It's amazing; I've read it twice. 

The logical conclusion of Miller's views is that the history of art and the history of the world is a document, a legacy, of the childhood treatment experienced by history's main actors. It's a fascinating theory which makes a lot of sense. 

She contends, in The Untouched Key, that Hitler and Stalin were products of neglectful, abusive, and traumatic childhoods, and that, as adults, they turned the terror they had endured as children back onto the world. 

These insights bring a sense of urgency and importance to the upcoming book by Trump's niece, psychologist Mary L. Trump. Ms. Trump's family history apparently describes "a nightmare of traumas and destructive relationships" and promises to “explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric”. I couldn't have said it better myself. Sounds like an important book. Read more about it here.