Crippled by critique

Dear Cary,

After reading “The voice inside my head is being mean to me” I decided to write about a recent experience that has quietly devastated me.

I went to art school in the eighties, where I fell in love with art. I was in a few shows and was well on my way to developing an identity as an actual working artist but then the student loans ran out and I had to learn how to survive in a world where nobody cares if you love the fauvists and Spanish colonial portraiture.

This meant working a long long string of low-paying jobs, engaging in ruinous love affairs, moving a lot, developing substance abuse issues, and just generally taking the long, hard way along.

I have not always made art through the years. A couple of years would go by when I was either too broke, too preoccupied with life, or too hopeless to get back to it.

Luckily my life is stable now, and I have been able to spend the past several-plus years drawing and painting and finally acquiring enough discipline and self-regard to give myself time to make art.

I have been pleased with my progress. I’ve been posting my work on Instagram, getting good feedback and building followers.

I live in a small town in the South, so social media is my link to the larger world. I look at a lot of art online (maybe too much) and follow the feeds of artists, galleries and museums that I admire. I follow a very popular critic who has a large online following. He posts a wide variety of artwork from up-and-coming artists. His followers freely comment on these works.

I commented on a piece that I didn’t particularly like and this critic EVISCERATED ME.  He must have checked my feed because he commented that my work was not even art, it was “illustrations of birds and Bambi” and that I should essentially “stay in my lane.”  I commented back that images of sexuality mixed with blood and gore were simply not my cup of tea, no harm intended, and added (sarcastically) that someone of my small cultural stature was not going to argue with a big, bad art critic such as himself.  When I checked Instagram later that day, the entire post had been removed. I’m not sure if he decided he didn’t want to be perceived as being cruel to one of  “the little people,”  if he was concerned that possibly the subject-matter police would remove the post for him, or what the reasoning was behind the removal. Truth be told, I wasn’t offended by the subject matter so much as I thought the work was kind of juvenile and the subject matter too “calculatingly provocative,” if you know what I mean.

The bottom line is that this experience has CRIPPLED me artistically. I haven’t finished a thing since this happened, and the mean voices that live inside MY head are going full tilt. I know my work is not Blue Chip “turn the art world on its ear” kind of stuff.  I don’t even hope to move in those lofty circles but I do aspire to make solid, interesting work that people like to look at, and that has a place in this world.  It sucks that just when I am FINALLY coming out of such a long period of darkness and self-doubt, I get punched in the face by a famous critic? My comment on the painting  didn’t imply in any way that the work shouldn’t exist, and I even complimented the line work and the color, so why would he single me out for such casual cruelty?  It feels like he kicked a puppy.

Devastated Inside

Dear Devastated Inside,

You have to get back to work. Go into the space where you do your work. Pick up your tools and materials. Position yourself where you do your work. You know how to do this. Notice what you feel. If you feel paralysis, or anger, or hopelessness, and you start to turn away from your work, stay there. Stay there in the place where you do your work. Notice what is going through your head, how your body feels, your respiration, your heartbeat, your hands. If the memory arises, stay with the discomfort of this memory as you hold the tools of your creative practice.

Maybe you will feel anger. Maybe a vision will come to you. If the feeling drives you to make some kind of art, just make the art without regard for where it is taking you or how it might be perceived. Make the art that arises in the moment. Let what you feel drive your work. If paralysis returns, just hang in there and feel the paralysis. If self-doubt returns, hang in there. Stay with your materials. Stay in that place, in that moment. You have a right to be there in that space. It is where you belong. If nothing happens at first, just hang out. Be with your materials. Something will happen eventually.

Then keep doing this. Your routine has been disrupted and it may need some reinforcement, so redouble the time you spend at it. Keep making art.

This man, whoever he is, he is in another universe. He is not in your studio with you. He doesn’t exist for you. He is in some other world of his own, possibly a world of pain and self-doubt all his own.

All that exists for you is your work and your space. I think that if you stay with your work, eventually the hurt and pain will recede and your delight in making art will return.

You may also need to face what is in yourself, at the heart of your pain and fear.

My interpretation of your situation would be this: You have ceded to another person authority over your own relationship to your work. You have allowed this person to live in your head as a judge. Somehow it must be your work to dislodge this presence. I do not know you personally so I do not know what this pain and fear is in their  material form, that is, what things have happened to you in your life. But I know what has happened to me, and I think that whatever has happened, the key is how I regard these things in the present moment. What I assume about them, what I allow them to signify.

In my own work on this problem, over the last few weeks, I have realized that I allowed these events in the past to signify that I had to submit to judgment. That I had to ask permission. That my creative life involved seeking approval. Not just recognition but actual approval.

This is such bullshit! But it is the truth in my case. I had assigned certain people to be my judges, and then I imagined them judging me harshly, and this stopped me in my tracks. I was living in an imaginary world in which these people would either praise me or denounce me. This whole drama was going on just below the level of consciousness, until I decided to really listen to my own fears, to the words I imagined/heard others saying about me. Doing this brought it to consciousness.

Sheesh. I would laugh about it if it weren’t so serious. I am not sure exactly how I did it. No, that’s not true. I am sure exactly how I did it. I am just amazed that it worked as well as it did.

About my exact methods … let’s just say I made a survey of my creative past, paying attention to incidents that are still painful to me today, and to people toward whom I continue to harbor ill will, hurt, regret, or a desire for vengeance. I looked at my longing and hurt, the feeling of anger and helplessness that would come over me when I would think about submitting a piece of work for publication i.e. presenting myself for judgment. I spent weeks meditating on this, and writing out the incidents in my past that caused me pain, and the reasons for these incidents–what I did, what I felt at the time.

I noticed that the same thing was appearing again and again. That was the key. Again and again was this: I wanted the approval of people I had never met. I wanted to be seen a certain way by these people who literally existed only in my own head. I wanted things which, I realize now, not only will I never get but which I do not need.

I don’t need any of these things which I was in the habit of feeling the need of. I don’t even want them!

What I wanted, I realized, was not any particular kind or level of attention, but just to be in the game. To be showing my work. To have it visible. I love doing the work and sharing it. I don’t need acclaim or approval or money for it.

To have it visible, that’s all. That is really what I wanted.

This involved looking at my past quite a bit. It was very intense. But doing it in this systematic way, and praying about it, for I do a lot of praying. Make of that what you will.

I have this imaginary friend I call God. We talk quite a bit. In the end we worked it out. We realized together that all I really want is to be able to show my work. I don’t care if it’s accepted. I’m not asking for praise. I’m not asking for money. I’m retired. I no longer have to work to pay the rent. I’m just putting my work on the side of the road, as it were. I’m just showing it. Or, it’s like I’m in a booth at a convention. Here’s my work. People can walk by and look at it. They don’t have to say anything.

Part of this analysis involved asking myself, What is my job here? What is my role? What am I responsible for? I realized that my only job is to make the work available. I don’t have to know if it’s “any good.” That terms makes me laugh. Is it “any good”? Maybe not! Maybe it’s total shit! Maybe I’m a complete moron, or an insane person. I reject the notion of “Is it any good?”

I reject the notion of “is it any good.” I reject that category. I can do that. You can’t stop me. I don’t have to pay attention to that category. I don’t have to accept it on face value. It’s a sort of meaningless epithet, “any good.” So I eliminated that category.

Instead, I created this whole other category called, “That’s your problem.” Everything about my work which other people may not like or not understand or be offended by, that all goes into the bin called “That’s your problem.”

If a person does weird stuff after viewing my work and pretends it’s because of my work, that’s not my problem.

I’m more comfortable being the crazy guy at the end of the line.

I was the crazy guy all those years writing for Salon too. That’s why Gawker had so much fun “at my expense.” I talked to one of the Gawker writers recently about that period where they made fun of me, him and some folks at what became of the Village Voice when it lost its way, they really had fun for a couple of years making fun of me, and I’ve had to make peace with that. I asked this guy, what was in it for you? and he just said they were having fun, they thought my stuff was really strange. True enough.

I must note also, such publications were driven by hits. They got lots of hits with those pieces about me. So they kept doing them for a couple of years. I didn’t really mind, once I thought about it. I hope it didn’t cause any real harm. I think all the readers knew I wasn’t clinically insane. It was all in fun.

Anyway, I’m lucky now, I don’t need to write for the money, I don’t need to write for the fame, I’m retired, I’m living in Italy, I write for the joy of it, I’ve got a good stereo, I’m listening to Bach cello concerto and I just don’t give a fuck.

I suggest you do the same. Do your art, show it to people, and don’t give a fuck what they do about it.

And now, I’m under a bit of a time constraint, and I have to record the podcast now, so, arrivederci, ci vediamo, a presto, see you next week! Ciao!