Daily Breakdowns 007 - Losing My Edge (Pt. II)

Yesterday, I wrote about what that point when artists (be they musicians, directors, authors, or comics creators) produce work that fails to connect with us in as satisfying a way as it once did. It's true that on some level, everyone's a critic, and it's also true that one's tastes are made up of an amalgamation of thousands of past experiences and sensations, and probably some DNA as well. Boys play rough and taunt each other, so it's no wonder they like The Three Stooges more than girls.

It's frustrating, however, that so many of us don't seem to recognize that every one's tastes are unique, as are the external factors influencing one's work, so every artist can and should be expected to disappoint eventually. Due to the pressures of being seen as some sort of poet-prophet in his youth, and/or because he just felt like doing something different, Bob Dylan willfully defied expectations in the mid-'60s by going electric, and would, with his Self-Portrait album in the '70s, confound his audience yet again, with parodies of other artists like Paul Simon, and vapid original material seemingly meant to challenge just how much a Dylan fan could take. And his changing of religious faith in the '70s also resulted in material that turned some listeners off, who perhaps were less interested in a non-skeptical Bob.

I notice I'm guilty of the same thing I find distasteful in others, which is trying to assign motivation for an artist for the work they produce. Whatever Dylan was trying to do with Self-Portrait, I don't know, just like another band going back to their more guitar-based sound might be commercially motivated, it might be because it feels good at the moment, or both or neither of those reasons. It gets funnier to read these analyses when it comes to comics, because a) even bad comics take a lot of physical effort to produce, and b) there's not a lot of money to be made.

Money is going to be a factor in almost everything an artist does. Aside from charity work or favors to friends, this is their job--making art--and they want to make a decent living at it. One should assume it's a factor and then not concern oneself with it, but too often, critics see an artist working on a franchise character or sequel to something successful, and think that the promise of a big payday means the artist isn't going to give his best effort. I think most artists do want to please themselves, with the audience hopefully following and satisfied. Few want to have a flop on their resume.

I'm hardly a student of the world, but I do know the U.S. public and our media emphasize accomplishments in terms of sales and box office, who's hot and who's not, etc. I think the European critical model is more balanced and healthier. They look at an artist's body of work and treat the latest product as just one more step on a journey. I think that's useful, and I think it's also useful to just look at an artist as a person trying to express themselves the best they can, despite a range of changing internal and external influences and impediments. Like anyone, they will fail at times, or they will succeed on their own terms, and those terms may no longer be relatable to others. As a member of the audience, whether a critic or not, we all have our own individual limits of how far we will follow an artist from the course we expect them to follow. Some get one CD or film or graphic novel. Others get the rest of their careers to try to ignite our senses the way they did long ago. There's some nostalgia and faith involved, maybe even kindness, and I don't see anything wrong with that, although that nostalgia can also be a straitjacket, such as the David Mazzucchelli "fan" who really just wants him to do superheroes again. Can John Byrne or Frank Miller do it again? M. Night Shyamalan? The Cure? Who knows, but I've certainly seen it happen now and again with other artists. It seems to me that if an artist has meant something to you, while it's fine to have high expectations, it's also a little ungrateful and just not understanding of what it means to be an artist not to expect some work to fail, and not to be prepared to stick with the artist for a while.

Christopher Allen
August 19th, 2009