The Artist as Supplier & Addict
Media addiction in the 21st century is not quite the modern equivalent of the drug addiction described first hand by Charles Baudelaire in “The Poem of Hashish” and Walter Benjamin in “Hashish in Marseilles.” It is arguably worse and has a farther reach than is readily apparent. We have complete access to everything that our world has to offer, at any time that we want it, and with an immediacy that has become more instant over the last ten years. Even though Baudelaire was speaking of hashish culture, “You could say that many lives are crowded into the compass of one hour” (52). Cultural ADD seems to be spreading like an epidemic. We exist in a period where “fast” is never quick enough. Our dependency on technology and our demands of immediacy have changed how we create and critique art.
Because immediacy permeates everything, I propose that we create meanings for and in the art we make to help them transcend immediacy and exist in an amount of time that lasts more than an instant. It becomes important, as least in my eyes, to differentiate art from the common digital instant “high” in its making and in its viewing. In a society where everything holds little value, I believe that artists are among a minority that strive to create something meaningful and lasting that can transcend the instantaneousness of modern gadgets. Even if one artist’s intent is to simply make a “pretty picture,” they are still attempting to provide a pause from the everyday flood of the instantaneous. At the same time, it becomes impossible to ignore that infinite possibilities constrict what we do simply because everything is accessible and everything is now a potential distraction as well as a potential inspiration. As Baudelaire stated, “[our] taste for the infinite…is a taste that quite frequently goes astray” (32). We’ve become a culture of indifference, and maybe we as artists are just as indifferent as the culture we exist in, but our art functions in ways that go beyond ourselves.
I’m not trying to imply that every piece of art made today needs to be profound or even matters, and I refuse to state that there is a need to differentiate between the various forms of contemporary art, specifically commercial and fine arts. Sometimes a painting or an illustration is only just a painting or illustration, but it will inevitably look like the artist through the terms and negotiation of its creation. I believe that this inevitability of “being” is the very state of transcendence of art existing next to the infinity of internet memes. A certain authenticity and honesty is always inherent and easily intuited by the viewer that marks Art’s separation from the common culture of immediacy.
This way of thinking creates another set of issues that intensify the demands of immediacy in our culture. Our art exists separate from ourselves, which itself is not an overarching problem and at times is a blessing. The problem stems from my point that our work inevitably “looks” like the person that creates it; if this is something that does hold true, it could be said that our art perpetuates our personalities, adding ourselves to the overflow of readily available digital ideas and doohickeys. Is our situation akin to that of Antonin Artaud, who wrote of a “desperate desire to escape” from his drug addiction (338)? Does our art create for us an inescapable persona that exacerbates our modern dilemma of the excess and immediacy of information?
This unintentional constriction can also be viewed as a byproduct of a God complex. We choose to create. We choose what we create. More often than not, we choose how our work is displayed. Whether we decide to imbue our work with any sort of “profundity,” we have complete control over the entire process, even when we profess that we relinquish some of that control into the “hands” of our materials. Are we that different from the individuals described by Baudelaire and Benjamin? Baudelaire, in particular, discusses the drug addicts’ God complex: that moment when one conceives and perceives that everything in the world has been made for (and by) oneself (70). With everything that is accessible to us in this digital age, aren’t we as artists doubly guilty of playing God and perpetuating a culture of immediacy?
Much like the individuals described by Baudelaire and Benjamin, we as artists are afflicted in a similar way. We make our choices and try to rectify our decisions with ourselves and with our external world, just as they did. The only difference is, we have an infinity of decisions and ideas to contend with and sift through that control how we think, consciously or unconsciously. We are society’s greatest enablers and its greatest critics, exactly because we attempt to resolve the problem of immediacy while we continue to aggravate the issue.
Works Cited
Artaud, Antonin. “Appeal to Youth: Intoxication/Disintoxication.” Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings. Ed. Susan Sontag. Berkley: University of California Press, 1988: 338-340. Print.
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Poem of Hashish.” Artificial Paradises. Trans. Stacy Diamond. New York: Citadel, 1998: 31-76. Print.
Benjamin, Walter. “Hashish in Marseilles.” Reflections: Essays, Aphorism, Autobiographical Writings. Ed. Peter Demetz. New York: Schocken, 1986: 137-145. Print.
This essay is © Ian J.F. Wagner.
Media addiction in the 21st century is not quite the modern equivalent of the drug addiction described first hand by Charles Baudelaire in “The Poem of Hashish” and Walter Benjamin in “Hashish in Marseilles.” It is arguably worse and has a farther reach than is readily apparent. We have complete access to everything that our world has to offer, at any time that we want it, and with an immediacy that has become more instant over the last ten years. Even though Baudelaire was speaking of hashish culture, “You could say that many lives are crowded into the compass of one hour” (52). Cultural ADD seems to be spreading like an epidemic. We exist in a period where “fast” is never quick enough. Our dependency on technology and our demands of immediacy have changed how we create and critique art.
Because immediacy permeates everything, I propose that we create meanings for and in the art we make to help them transcend immediacy and exist in an amount of time that lasts more than an instant. It becomes important, as least in my eyes, to differentiate art from the common digital instant “high” in its making and in its viewing. In a society where everything holds little value, I believe that artists are among a minority that strive to create something meaningful and lasting that can transcend the instantaneousness of modern gadgets. Even if one artist’s intent is to simply make a “pretty picture,” they are still attempting to provide a pause from the everyday flood of the instantaneous. At the same time, it becomes impossible to ignore that infinite possibilities constrict what we do simply because everything is accessible and everything is now a potential distraction as well as a potential inspiration. As Baudelaire stated, “[our] taste for the infinite…is a taste that quite frequently goes astray” (32). We’ve become a culture of indifference, and maybe we as artists are just as indifferent as the culture we exist in, but our art functions in ways that go beyond ourselves.
I’m not trying to imply that every piece of art made today needs to be profound or even matters, and I refuse to state that there is a need to differentiate between the various forms of contemporary art, specifically commercial and fine arts. Sometimes a painting or an illustration is only just a painting or illustration, but it will inevitably look like the artist through the terms and negotiation of its creation. I believe that this inevitability of “being” is the very state of transcendence of art existing next to the infinity of internet memes. A certain authenticity and honesty is always inherent and easily intuited by the viewer that marks Art’s separation from the common culture of immediacy.
This way of thinking creates another set of issues that intensify the demands of immediacy in our culture. Our art exists separate from ourselves, which itself is not an overarching problem and at times is a blessing. The problem stems from my point that our work inevitably “looks” like the person that creates it; if this is something that does hold true, it could be said that our art perpetuates our personalities, adding ourselves to the overflow of readily available digital ideas and doohickeys. Is our situation akin to that of Antonin Artaud, who wrote of a “desperate desire to escape” from his drug addiction (338)? Does our art create for us an inescapable persona that exacerbates our modern dilemma of the excess and immediacy of information?
This unintentional constriction can also be viewed as a byproduct of a God complex. We choose to create. We choose what we create. More often than not, we choose how our work is displayed. Whether we decide to imbue our work with any sort of “profundity,” we have complete control over the entire process, even when we profess that we relinquish some of that control into the “hands” of our materials. Are we that different from the individuals described by Baudelaire and Benjamin? Baudelaire, in particular, discusses the drug addicts’ God complex: that moment when one conceives and perceives that everything in the world has been made for (and by) oneself (70). With everything that is accessible to us in this digital age, aren’t we as artists doubly guilty of playing God and perpetuating a culture of immediacy?
Much like the individuals described by Baudelaire and Benjamin, we as artists are afflicted in a similar way. We make our choices and try to rectify our decisions with ourselves and with our external world, just as they did. The only difference is, we have an infinity of decisions and ideas to contend with and sift through that control how we think, consciously or unconsciously. We are society’s greatest enablers and its greatest critics, exactly because we attempt to resolve the problem of immediacy while we continue to aggravate the issue.
Works Cited
Artaud, Antonin. “Appeal to Youth: Intoxication/Disintoxication.” Antonin Artaud: Selected Writings. Ed. Susan Sontag. Berkley: University of California Press, 1988: 338-340. Print.
Baudelaire, Charles. “The Poem of Hashish.” Artificial Paradises. Trans. Stacy Diamond. New York: Citadel, 1998: 31-76. Print.
Benjamin, Walter. “Hashish in Marseilles.” Reflections: Essays, Aphorism, Autobiographical Writings. Ed. Peter Demetz. New York: Schocken, 1986: 137-145. Print.
This essay is © Ian J.F. Wagner.