What Is Art Without Vulnerability?
When I started this newsletter 3 weeks ago, I installed some rules and sentiments for myself as this progresses.
Don’t corner yourself.
Write something every day.
Don’t be afraid of making bad work.
Be brutally honest.
In Tuesday’s issue, I mentioned that I would be sending out a following newsletter with some thoughts on contradictions in art. I cornered myself slightly. Rick Rubin says that creativity is the circulation of energetic ideas and that there is a time for every idea to come to fruition. Ultimately, it is on us to act on them before another idea passes it by. We all experience it when we think of a crazy invention but don’t do anything about it and then 3 years later we see it invented. It is not that they took your idea, it’s just that it was that idea’s time to become a reality.
I’ll get to the contradictions piece… but first, let’s talk about vulnerability.
The other day I exchanged a few messages with my friend Kenny after he read the last issue. A couple of years ago we collaborated on a photo project together where in a few instances, he captured me naked, coddling a painting of mine. And in another instance, squatting over said painting as if I were defecating on it (it was my idea). Let’s just say some ideas can be left undone, but I digress. I responded to him somewhat humorously,
“What is art without vulnerability?”
While I don’t think my joke landed, it’s an honest question and I think there is much to discuss.
I titled this project, "i don’t know yet".” It’s an investigative piece delving into the idea of love and loss as an artist.
Watch i don’t know yet HERE
I cry every time I watch it. It is the most crucial piece of work that I have made to date. There is nothing in this world that I cherish more than my profoundly intense relationship with my dear friend, Jack Nathan, who died in July 2020. It was he who said on a rainy Denver day in his bedroom, “This is fucking boring… Want to make some shit?” in September 2019.
It’s 2023 and I am still making shit, just without Jack.
As artists, we create, create, create… make, make, make… and for what? Our work just to get thrown into the endless abyss of other shit? No! Of course not. We make because of our love of making. It is the making that makes us feel whole, that drives us to put our best foot forward, to make sense of the world, to connect and engage, to love and even to hate, to express and to embrace… We craft our stories and then let the world decide what it means.
To make art is to be fearless. To make great art is to be vulnerable. —Me, D.M.
(I looked this up… I can’t believe nobody has said this yet. You heard it here, first!)
If you are struggling with ways to be vulnerable it means that either you or the subject matter isn’t ready to be acted on. Being vulnerable is not an act that is forced or scheduled. The act of being vulnerable is something that you are or you are not. Please feel free to disagree with me. However, I do believe that vulnerability can be learned through practice. At the beginning of this article, I wrote, “Don’t be afraid of making bad work.” This is a step towards eliciting vulnerability in my writing and in my art practice. The practice of this step is happening right now and it’s working. Two weeks from now I could look back at this piece and be embarrassed about it, maybe even mortified, but that’s a feeling I am prepared to have then, not now. Make sense?
It is my suggestion not to look to the future as much as we do. The present moment deserves all of your time. It is the only thing we feel like we have control over and even then, we sometimes aren’t prepared for it.
Making art is like love. We put all of our time and effort, our thoughts and ideas, pain and joys, cares and compassions, blood, sweat, and tears into it, and its end is unknown. Artists strive to put all of themselves into what they do because that is the way of the artist. Recognizing that vulnerability comes in ebbs and flows will support you in finding your way to create art that best serves the reasons you do it in the first place.
Don’t be afraid of making bad work. What’s the worst that could happen?
Your pal,
Eli