On Being an Artist

Regular people often have a false impression of what an artist is, and sometimes they ask dumb questions. Like “How do you draw so good?” I dunno. One day I picked up a pencil and started drawing. It’s difficult for people with little or no artistic talent to understand why or how an artist does what he/she does. It’s even hard for us as artists to understand why or how we do what we do. It just happens. Like growing hair, or farting. We don’t really need to think about it too much.
What makes it worse is I run into people all the time who think they are artists, but really have about us much talent as my left shoe. But they want the mystique of the title “artist”. Talent isn’t just some magical thing; it needs developing, or it will just stagnate. But it does have to be there. As Ethel Merman once said “Either you got it, or you ain’t. And all the singing lessons in the world ain’t gonna help you if you ain’t got it”. The same goes for visual art. There are certain things which simply cannot be taught and that’s just the way it is. That’s why I detest “modern art”.
Modern art requires almost no skill or talent, and has little to no form. All you have to do is throw some paint at a canvas and boom! You’re done! “Installation pieces” are even worse. Just a random assemblage of junk. And people pay thousands upon thousands of dollar for this garbage. Seriously, most modern art is indistinguishable from the paintings created by captive apes. If a chimpanzee and can do what you do, guess what sunshine, you got no talent! Maybe you should try a different career field.
Sorry for the rant, but it aggravates me when I see people who make garbage get all the prestige and accolades, meanwhile artists who are far more talented (and I’m not necessarily talking about myself) get ignored. Sorry people, but beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. There have to be objective standards of what art is and what it is not, or we just have chaos.
So what is my criterion for “real art”? Well, for one thing, you should be able to look at a painting or a sculpture and know immediately what you’re looking at. If you have to ask someone what it is you’re looking at, then it’s not art. It’s that simple! Even a child could figure it out! Apparently, it’s so simple that only a child could figure it out...