Self Exposed

Mike liked to sketch faces. His drawings were similar to this Cezanne sketch:

(picture used with the courtesy of http://www.jamesharrisgallery.com/Previous%20Exhibitions/junctions.htm)

However, during a trip to NYC, Mike's world was rocked by Kwang-Young Chun's Aggregations (pictured below):

Afterwards, he abandoned his face studies and dedicated himself to exploring the sculptural potential of paper (a practice related to but not the same as Chun's).

Does this mean that Mike's facial explorations through drawing were insincere (because he dropped them at the first sight of something cooler) or that Mike's facial explorations were sincere but Chun's work opened a new creative path in Mike's mind that was more "authentically representative" of his creative self than his sketches?

Of course, one would actually have to know Mike to answer this question but I propose it because it gets one thinking about the recurring proposition: How does an artist stay true to herself? This inquiry relies on many assumptions, one being that there is a "true self" and another: that the potential for singular and honest artistic expression exists in each artist.

Cultural critic Lionel Trilling recounts J. J. Rousseau's ideas of how the pure self becomes corrupt in his 1972 book Sincerity and Authenticity:

The individual who lives in an urban setting is subject to the constant influence, the literal in-flowing of the mental processes of others, which, in the degree that they stimulate or enlarge his consciousness, make it less his own. He finds it ever more difficult to know what his own self is and what being true to it consists of...Rousseau's "savage" lives within himself--proof of perfect autonomy.

The biggest problem with this line of thinking is that ignorance then becomes the goal. Hiding from new information is the cure for the disintegration of the self. When one thinks about it, this logic is absurd because from the moment of birth one is subject to an "in-flowing" of information that is not one's own. Only an impossible, abstract version of a horrible person who couldn't absorb any information could be the ideal pure self.

My interest here isn't to make people defiant of cultural refinement. I'm not saying "Don't look at other people's art, be true to your self," but rather focus on the gate. What's in your garden? What's outside of it? Where did the stuff that's in come from? Why do you keep other stuff out? Are you conscious of what is in and is out? How much so?

Let's say that Mike's facial studies were beget from the habitual drawing of the human form in a drawing class rather than a pure fascination with the subtle movements of a smile. This state is less sincere than that of Jennifer's, who was hypnotized by the peculiarities of the mouth and thought that drawing was the best medium to examine this phenomena.

The core of this thought process is actual interest vs. simulated interest. When I was a child, I liked sports because my dad did. I simulated his interest. However, as I got older, I developed a love for the passion and dizzying movement involved in the game. My simulated interest progressed into an actual interest.

Maybe Mike's interest in the face was only simulated and Chun's work opened a path that began as simulated but will evolve into actual.

Here, I have to keep the internal/external dichotomy of the self in mind. What portion of our interests are for ourselves and what portion are for society?

Trilling mentions Alex de Tocqueville's assessment of America in the 1800's. He said:

The democratic dispensation required [Americans] to shape their speech not by the standards of a particular class or circle but by their sense of the opinion of the public...[This] democratic style doesn't signify an absence of sincerity; it does however, indicate that the personal self to which the American would wish to be true is not the private, sold intractable self of the Englishman...[This] American self can be taken to be a microcosm of American society...

This passage describes an open self, one that is simultaneously sincere (as in true) and general. But if the self is general, how can it exist? If the American self is one shaped on the public, then the public, as being the whole, consumes the self. Logically, this leads to all being the same. Of course, us being singular entities, we are physically separate. And our placement and filters distort our in-flow, causing default peculiarities.

Therefore, the artist's job is to seek and identify these default peculiarities, these variables we've been dealt, and see how they shape the world distinctly from one's vantage point (if the goal is unique, honest expression). I watch South Park (general sameness), but I watch it from Williamsport, PA (default distinction) and see it as related to my locale and my experiences.

Mike should be conscious of the fact that his new interest in paper came from Chun and that perhaps he's currently mimicking Chun's interest for the sake of Aesthetic pop. But he should also make sure that his interest in paper and his future direction with paper is not defined by Chun's. If it is, it can't help but be false. He must discover aspects of paper that are colored by his experiences; ones that make a favorable impression on him because he's him.

Chun's interest in mulberry paper came from his Korean's cultures traditional use of mulberry paper. Mike unconsciously cut up paper while he was bored in class in high school. This can be claimed as an honest interest due to a past experience. If he explores paper in that context by making tiny notebook paper sculptures, he's being true to himself. This would then be a synthesis of an inner interest combined with an external stimulant to form a particular, honest path. If others have cut up notebook paper to make sculptures in exactly the same way as Mike, it's a victory for the innate generality of the self caused by common experience, but it's sincere.