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| Poster for 1980 horror film, Delusion. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53838146 |
Unfortunately this post is less about homocidal insanity, and more about abstruse COVID-seclusion navel-gazing. To wit: how do I, as an artist, know that what I think about my art is what other people actually see? Am I deluded in my evaluation of my own talent? And, last but not least: Am I deluded in my goals as an artist?
1. Did I actually make what I thought I made?
I've always lived in my head, so my connection to reality - objective reality - has always been tenuous at best. I can't count how many times I've created an image, thinking I'm expressing one thing, only to have another person look at it and interpret it completely the opposite. This occurs especially when I'm making an obscure point that I'm extremely close to: I end up using motifs that are especially meaningful to me, without realizing the very same motif means something completely different in the local Zeitgeist.
Confounding this fact is that other people are, well, not objective. I can show a piece of art to a relatively intelligent person, and they jump to a far-out conclusion that is off-the-wall bonkers, and remain convinced of their own correctness no matter how much I point out that my image had nothing to do with what they're talking about. This is especially frustrating when said person has a particular hobby-horse they're low-grade obsessed with, and thus interpret everything they see through that lens.
(Does it seem like I'm referencing a particular instance? I'm not. I'm speaking in very broad, general terms about something I've noticed throughout my life as an artist. However, from my tone, you probably assumed there was a particular instance I'm hinting at, between the lines so to speak, and so are wondering, What's he griping about in particular? And so the interpretive mess continues. It's like a drain clogged with spaghetti, individual strands falling apart at the touch, but combining into a massive, gluten-y glob).
So to pinpoint my frustration, my main concern as an artist is that I'm deluded in some way. By "deluded", I mean that my perspective is vastly off-center from what is actually real. I'm not going to get caught up in philosophical acrobatics about "what is real" and all that nonsense; my own conviction - my anchor, if you will - is that there is a vague target of objective reality that most of us can agree on, if only in an infinite Venn-diagram sort of way. I'm also not going to fall into the trap of, "All interpretation is relative" acid-trip flower-tribe lunacy: if there's at least a vaguely objective reality, there's also a sense that someone can be fucking wrong. Thus I believe that artistic intent does matter, and one of the main questions in art is, "Did the artist get their point across?" Thus, the viewer can miss the point entirely.
So to summarize, here's the main questions:
1) Did I get my point across, i.e. did I make the art I thought I made?
2) Did the particular viewer get the point?
and, if not...
3) Is that particular viewer reliable?
I think the very best way to address question 1 is to have a group of people you can rely on to make a fair, balanced critique. Usually these are friends, but the kind of friends who are willing to tell you if you are wrong. Someone with an ax to grind is not reliable - if they're telling you that you suck because they dislike you, or want to see you fail for some reason, they aren't reliable at all (internet trolls are NEVER reliable). A lot of artists - especially comic book artists - get trapped in their own head very easily, and learning how to slip out of that trap long enough to see another person's point of view is a valuable skill that is not taught often enough. I think the problem is especially difficult for comic book artists, because the medium itself is about flow, about entering into the story through the visuals and being carried along; the discrepancy between a creator's flow and what he's actually putting on paper can be massive. That's why it's important to check your work with others at each stage of the multistage process.
Question 2 and 3 dovetail into each other. To understand whether a particular individual got the point you were trying to make, you have to know something about their mental state and their beliefs - again, this is why you have friends do the critiquing before you just find some rando; you at least know where they're coming from. And honestly, there are some friends you don't want to critique your work. I once made a website page for a class - a rather unconventional website page, mind you; I was trying out different things - and when I showed it to one particular friend, she freaked out on me. She told me it was awful, and I had no idea what I was doing, and it wouldn't work at all. But when I showed it to my graphic design class, they were delighted and amused.
So what gives? Well, I realized my friend was...not all there. I mean, objectively speaking, she was unreliable. I'm not particularly sure why she gave the critique she did, but I suspect there was an element of knocking me down a peg, or of her extreme confidence in her own ability to judge a piece of art; at any rate, her critique came off as a bit of a knee-jerk, and a little personal at that (I believe her pet phrase, "You don't know what you're doing" came into play). In other words, her inability to challenge her own viewpoint, plus her particular view of me, colored the way she viewed my art. (For what it's worth, our friendship didn't work out in the end; not because she criticized my art, but because her critique was indicative of her general personality and attitude toward our friendship...anyway, water under the bridge).
Let's segué into another aspect of a good critique: knowledgeability of the audience. This one's a little tricky. I'll illustrate using the old, "who the hell designed this TV remote?" problem: sometimes those who are a little too knowledgeable about the subject (in this case, TV remote engineers) are less useful than the general public (anyone who has to use a TV remote). Said engineers have to craft a product that includes all the functions dictated from above, and usually do so in a way that makes sense to them from an electronics perspective. Their peers, being in the same craft, will look at it and agree that it is indeed a very elegant design, and high-fives for jamming all that functionality into so small a space, and yeah definitely that button should be called "input" instead of "switch from one device to another" because, y'know, we aren't a bunch of dum-dums here. Once a prototype is created, marketing will run a test group of (paid) "members of the general public", who will say, "Meh", which is interpreted as "HOT DAMN what a good TV remote!" because there's a lot of pressure from up above. Then the product gets rammed through production, hits the shelves as the Second Coming of TV Remotes, and the actual buyers and users are left scratching their heads at all the useless, cryptically-labeled buttons. At every step of the process someone could have been like, "Hey wait a minute, this 35-button monstrosity makes no sense," but there's no incentive to do so.
Same goes with art, and especially comics. That's why you have Marvel and DC publishing some pretty insane shit - they're just too close to the product to think about the end user. They have a craft, goddammit, and they're not paid to think about the craft, just to do the craft. And thus we keep seeing the comics equivalent of the bizarre, 35-button TV remote, while the readership continues to drop off.
So in conclusion: find a good group of people, preferably friends, who are knowledgeable about your art but not too knowledgeable, to critique your art. And listen to them. Because it will make your art better.
2. Am I as good as I think I am?
We all have that one friend with a huge ego. They think they can do no wrong. And people generally don't tell them they're wrong, because let's admit, charisma is catching. Confidence and affability make you agree with whatever they're saying, and besides, if you disagree with them, you'll be on the outside. It's a big headache. My (dis)advantage is that I'm never quite on the inside to begin with, and so large egos tend to put me off...yeah, I don't get invited to a lot of big-name parties.
Now, the ultimate Ego Project is undoubtedly a movie. Movies involve a huge amount of money and people to get made, and anyone heading a movie wields enormous power over a veritable army of staff who are loathe to question his creative/directorial choices. That's how you end up with The Room and other such bombastic nonsense.
But if you're not quite rich enough to mobilize a film crew, yet still have that narcissistic itch, you'll settle for comic books.
But if you're not quite rich enough to mobilize a film crew, yet still have that narcissistic itch, you'll settle for comic books.
I'll use as example this particular gem: the independently-created and published Civilian Justice by Graig Weich, under his label, Beyond Comics.
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| Not to belabor the point, but the titular character is actually male...so is he drawn female on the cover? Am I tripping? |
Essentially it's about a careless ne'er-do-well who becomes a vigilante superhero after his girlfriend is killed in the 9-11 attacks, fighting supervillainous Middle Eastern terrorists...standard jingoistic tripe for the time. Comic Tropes did a video on this particular comic, so I'm not going to pick it apart here (if anything, I think CT got a little lost in the weeds with his critique...there is such a thing as too nitpicky). And CT does make a point that we have to give concessions to independent comics, as a) they have nowhere near the budget the larger publishers can bring to bear; and b) it's nice to see somebody following their passion.
But to my mind, those two factors (and especially the uber-patriotism on display) cannot be used as shields against honest critique. And neither of them can diminish the fact that this comic is an ego project from the get-go, not only jumping aboard the 9-11 bandwagon with both feet, but featuring a stand-in for the creator as a main character (what is referred to in the industry a "Mary-Sue"). And my main issue is not that someone went to the trouble of self-publishing a bad comic - that happens woefully often - but that no one told them to stop. It's the perennial Yes-Man problem, where the creator listens only to the people they're paying, and thus never received objective criticism that might cause them to question their evaluation of their own talent.
Now I'm not saying that artists should stop making art simply because they are still untrained - hell, I know my art is not The Best, and I'm always working to make my art better - but I also labor under the conviction that, before you even start working on a comic for publication, you should ask: Am I there yet? In other words, is your creation up to a standard where you should publish it?
This sounds mean-spirited and elitist, I know. I'll admit, I have a pretty high standard for published comics, even independent comics; and while I won't stop an enthusiastic creator from publishing their creation, I also think there's an artistic bar that independent comics often fail to meet. It's a conundrum that gets me frustrated: gatekeepers - in the old days, established comic book publishers - definitely throttled many creative artists and storytellers because they didn't see their work as marketable; but in this new landscape of digital on-demand self-publishing, the same gatekeepers that would be saying "hang on, your story and art need a lot of work" have been shunted aside. It's artistic anarchy. And the old saying about the "Cream rising to the top" simply isn't proving true; rather, in a glut of artistic material available 24/7/365 on the internet, it's the familiar and/or easily digested that rises to the top. So from a marketing standpoint, old Graig was on the money with his Civilian Justice (at least at the time), because the American public was looking for anti-terrorist superheroes in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. And because his project was uber-patriotic in an uber-patriotic time in American history, and he was paying all the people who should have been questioning him, he went ahead with his project despite its artistic bankruptcy.
So as an artist, I have to turn this inward: Am I really as good as I think I am? And is my particular project really as good as I felt it was while I was creating it? Before I send this off to another publisher, or publish it myself, I have to pore over it (with my editor) and fret over the question of whether or not it's a quality product. Is the art up to par? Is the writing succinct and eloquent? Did I get my point across? Am I staying on-target with the themes, etc.? All of this is to get out of my own head and shrug off my own ego in order to view my work objectively. As long as I don't get stuck in a hall-of-mirrors thinking loop, I usually end up coming to an accurate view of my comic, and/or can make the necessary changes.
A word about ego: for an artist, it's a tricky thing. Let's be honest, ego motivates us in the first place: we want people to see our work and be all like, "Ooh, ahh." At the same time, we want to be really good, if not THE BEST, at what we do - if not for the approval of others, then for a certain pride of craftsmanship. So ego isn't a bad thing; it's sort of a neutral thing. But like all neutral things, it can be corrupted. On the one hand, a huge ego can make you a narcissist and The One True Talent; on the other, it can beat you into a pulp because your Stuff Isn't Good Enough. Either way, your perspective will be warped so thoroughly that you can't see your work objectively. And the only cure for that is to work closely with other people who will give you solid advice on your work.
So in conclusion: Question your own perspective. And remember that other peoples' criticism is not an attack.
3) Am I deluded in my goals as an artist?
Hopefully I won't veer into metaphysical or philosophical territory with this one; it's another ego problem, but I think it's separate from the question of talent per sé.
To outline this question, I'm going to tell my story.
Way back in high school, and through most of college, I was convinced I would have a career as an artist. How I would go about doing this wasn't important; I had the talent, and so I would just eventually be "discovered" and packed off to Successful Artist land. My first semester at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago did nothing to disabuse me of this notion, as I got plenty of Oohs and Ahhs over my artwork, for my technical skill and outside-the-box thinking. Then the second semester rolled around, and I started seeing cracks in my Life Plan, even if I didn't recognize them as such. The classes were much more abstract and boring, and I didn't like this set of instructors all that much. In my defense, art schools are not known for their exactly rigorous standards and aims, so I was left wondering what the point was...but at the same time, despite my intelligence and talent, I was a pretty poor student.
I came home after one semester. Life in Chicago had been interesting, but my finances were in shambles, and I had been pretty lonely in the Windy City - much later I would mark this as the beginning of a major depression. I was now saddled with $30,000 in student loan debt, plus the hash I'd made of my checking account. I didn't have a lot of what you'd call, "life skills", and balancing a checkbook apparently falls under that category. I got a job at the local library as a page and enrolled in community college, eventually settling on a Graphic Design degree as being in the, let's say general area of an art career. My skills as a student, or lack thereof, began to catch up with me. I once narrowly dodged a plagiarism charge on one of my assignments (more due of a lack of forethought than any malicious intent). With no career, massive debt, and the feeling that I was just spinning my wheels, added to the Great Recession of 2008, I fell into a spiral of self-loathing and resentment. While I did find a new group of friends (including my current comics partner-in-crime, Joe Haines), I also found my whole mental structure and identity crumbling like a mud house in a flood. It was May 20th, 2010 - I clearly remember that date - that I had my nervous breakdown, and I spent the next three years battling back from some seriously intense depression and near-psychotic anxiety.
I had to come to terms with a lot of stuff during this period - mental, spiritual, familial, and identity-related. My whole construct of who I thought I was and how I thought the world worked had broken down, and I had to build my mind from the ground up. One of the biggest realities I faced, was simply coming to terms with the fact that I might not make it as an artist. True, Joe and I started the Blind Alley Comics operation in 2009 (under the name "Dark Corner Productions"), and I haven't stopped since; but all the same I had to face that big fear.
You see, I had to learn that a person can't just be one thing - you can't just be, for instance, a comic book artist, and ignore everything else in pursuit of that goal. You have to build up yourself in other ways as well. I think that was my problem growing up, where art so consumed my life and provided so much validation that I didn't need to grow in other areas; in effect, my mental state and identity were retarded (in the verb sense) because I was so consumed by my art. Coming face to face with the awful reality of the world was simply too much. I don't know if it was a sheltered upbringing, or if it was my "fault" in some way; the best I can figure, that's just the way it worked out. There's still some parts of me that are immature and need to grow up.
So what am I saying? That my desire to be a working artist was a delusion? Not at all. The delusion lay in the way I framed my dream; my impatience to achieve that dream; and the way I monomoniacally pursued the dream.
So let's start with the framing: how did I think I would achieve my artistic career? If I'm being honest, I really did think the world owed it to me - since I had the talent, I would quickly be "discovered" and have it all handed to me on a platter. Admittedly I wasn't exactly dreaming of fame and fortune here, I just wanted it all to be easy. The platitudes about the difficulty of breaking into the industry fell on deaf ears, and to my sheltered mind, "hard" didn't mean much because I didn't know what "hard" was. There was a real laziness underlying my character, in which I excelled at certain things because I found them easy (i.e., drawing or test-taking) while I blew off the things I found tedious or difficult (i.e., homework in general, or math in particular). So my delusion here was in thinking I would have it all handed to me.
My impatience was also a delusion - the thought that it would all happen immediately, or at least soon. Since then I've become more than disabused of this notion - I mean, here I am eleven years after the inception of what would become Blind Alley Comics, and I still haven't "made it". Impatience is an especially difficult vice to shake because despair is always nibbling at the boundaries of your dreams, even if you don't realize it, and with the realization that it's going to be a) a really, really long slog; or b) that it might not happen at all (see above), you can fall pretty quickly into hopelessness. It takes time and experience, because only with the benefit of perspective can you see that things really do turn out - it just takes years and years. And it doesn't help that all we ever see - all we're ever presented with - are stories of meteoric success. Our culture, and especially comic book culture, drools over prodigies, without ever questioning how or why they gained such prominence so quickly, and what the ramifications are for them and their work.
The last delusion lies in monomania, the pursuit of a single thing above all others, to the point of obsession and even madness. Your desire for something cannot consume your whole life. We think of monomania in terms of revenge, or maybe an inventor or a mad scientist - but it can happen to anyone. My monomania was my art career. I spent every waking minute convinced I was the Chosen One, and striving for my goal. If I was just a little more manic, or had fewer personal issues holding me back, I might still be on that track. But this was a case in which my weaknesses proved a godsend, and I wasn't able to drive down that single track forever. Who knows, maybe eventually I might have gotten where I needed to go, but I personally think (and hopefully this isn't just me comforting myself) that my failures made me all the richer as an artist and a person. If I'd have just pursued the dream and ended up working for Marvel or DC, I would have ended up as just another cog in the comic book-making machine - maybe somewhat regarded by a handful of fans, but most likely just another small fish in a big pond, working my tail off doing cleanup work on Spider Mans until they put me out to pasture, alcoholic and spiteful. Now this is the worst-case scenario; maybe I would have succeeded...but from where I sit right now, that success doesn't seem appealing. I feel like I'm more blessed, and far happier where I am - regardless of how far I am from success - than if I'd blown up at a younger age.
So in conclusion: Beware of delusion in your artistic goals. And understand that it might take time before you realize you're in delusion.
I often worry that what I post in this blog is so hall-of-mirrors thinking, that it makes sense to me alone. But I also have a faint notion (and here's where that objective reality comes in) that my experiences might be useful to other artists, and other humans in general. Maybe I cover topics you may not have thought of, or provide a new perspective if you're stuck in a rut. Regardless, I hope I've laid out some interesting food for thought.
Rick Out.
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