The main problem with "artist" as a career is that it produces an outsized number of books about writers, failed screenplays about failed screenwriters, films about acting, and cartoons about animation or chilling coolstyle with your pals in not-San Francisco. This isn't even on the artists-- if you drag a guy out of a welding workshop and make him write a book, he'll still think he's supposed to write the next Dr. Seuss but he'll wimp out and call it "Mr. Puppy Learns A Lesson". Consumerism eradicated the uncontacted tribes
I do think that "art has the power to change things" stops applying when your raison d'etre is "I really loved Ghibli films growing up" or "I want to share my kinky power fantasy". To fulfill that phrase, the art should be used as a tool to say important things and make them spread wider. If visual artists are a class who say largely the same things--identity navelgazing, cool things they saw on a screen, safe regurgitated opinions--then the opportunity for change becomes inert. If a bit of world news or history would spice the scene up significantly, things are dire.
That said. Every time someone with no affection for these spaces uses this criticism to paint genAI as harmless, I get one neuron closer to being able to explode people with my mind
This is why I’ve been very critical of going to art or writing school if you want to make ‘good’ art. Not saying it can’t be valuable, especially if you already have a point of view and you’re struggling to find the skills to articulate it. But theres a reason why “40 year old writer getting a divorce,” is such an archetype in pretentious books.
If your whole identity is just Artist then 1. Your ego and personal narrative might get in the way of taking actual risks, and you might get too caught up in emulating what success as an Artiste is expected to look like and end up enmeshing yourself and your voice in an already incredibly inbred scene. Ooor 2. Your artistic narrative becomes the struggles of being an Artist, which roughly 99 percent of artists have some type of opinion on, of which half of them have already made into their own thesis.
I have weird-life-story-privilege, but in general ive always been a proponent of the idea that if you have a creative bone in your body you should just go out and experience a bunch of random ass shit. Become the guy at the welding workshop, delete social media, get really into a specific field that is in no way at all associated with creativity. Make mistakes, take risks and feel the consequences under your skin.
That life changing book you read is that way because the author had their own truth to share. Instead of copying their ideas you need to live your own life until youre left with a question or epiphany that just about forces you to pick up a pencil if only to get it out of your own head. You’re a human being, not a xerox.
YEAH and more practically— dedicating yourself to the study of art as a shut-in online westerner is 1) very fun and 2) priming you to have more skills in production than in having ideas worth producing. But I suppose that’s true of most education these days.
I say this as someone who hasn’t exactly been on a lot of adventures: we unfortunately have no shortage of art by people who don’t go on any adventures. Do a second thing!