Lucid Dreaming

Making and Being

by Beth E. Wilson, January 17, 2007

Why is it that we’re so interested in artists’ lives? No one seems to care what an accountant or a sanitation worker does in his or her extracurricular pursuits, whether or not they’re married or divorced, or have kids, or how they decorate their homes. But when we talk about artists—well, everything seems to grow in significance. There’s a theory that even Warhol’s Campbell Soup can paintings were autobiographical, because apparently he had a can nearly every day for lunch. So far as I can tell, this is more interesting in terms of explaining his notorious cheapskate streak than explaining the paintings, but it serves as testament to the deep-seated need we have to explain cultural, creative objects in terms of the life of their creators. Even the esteemed John Richardson saw fit to promote the view that Picasso’s art is at any one time a function of the changes in five private forces—his mistress, his house, his poet, his set of admirers, and his dog (sic!). Such explanations seem to spring out of common assumptions of what art is about—most often these are sprung on some unarticulated notion that before it is anything else, art is (personal) expression, pure and simple. (Of course, the whole concept of expression itself is anything but pure and simple, but let’s not trouble ourselves with all that!) The element that tends to fall away from (or at least trail behind) in such accounts is the degree to which humans are fundamentally social beings: Without the possibility of having others look at or engage with the work, why would anyone bother making art? (Of course I am exempting here those special cases of “outsider” artists who obsessively construct their alternate universes, often over a lifetime, with no expectation—and sometimes even with hostility to—the idea that others will get to see their art. They are the exception that proves the rule, in this case.) Just as it is impossible for there to be a language spoken by only one person, there can be no culture without the presence of at least a few other people to witness it.