Let’s speak candidly now, and understand that this paper is for your eyes only. Not in any sense of intimacy, but in its stead for the blinding goal of matriculation. I have no desire to graduate with a utility belt: portfolio’s of this and that, connections in the world of business, equations to uncover those words god has or has not spoken into physical law. I seek only the degree which eludes me to such an extent that my head start has landed me squarely in the middle of the pack. My intended audience is the only person who may be reading this now. You’ve heard my voice. Hopefully you speak my language. In any case this is what I don’t have to say, except when forced to do so.

★ ★ ★

Art as truth has been betrayed by those accolades which seek to reinforce those in its pursuit. Those recognitions bestowed upon those upon us who’ve bared all have lead to the impossibility of artistry without first the the very antithesis of expression. It is my standing, stolen, as many understandings are, from another, that for an individual to be be truly recognized through their creation, they have to first create something so lifeless and far from themselves that they might prove their worth as a part of a whole before they’re allowed to venture into a more personal endeavor. Its in one’s uninhibited expression that there is value in art. It’s been said that any attempt to create is an attempt to have one’s individuality recognized and confirmed by the outside world, and it is through our system of recognition that any individuality in art is hindered. Looking to those great artists of the past and present, we can see with certainty how harmful this unyielding hazing of burgeoning creatives is on the process of expression.

Its no secret that a great many artists have been lost to the annals of history, or may simply be gone without a trace. Their loss in not just tragedy for them, in their inability to be seen, but also for us who may never see the fruits of their labor, and may never understand what they may have been to us. Though I cannot provide any such example of such a great person who is not even slightly remembered, I can speak to those who lived without that recognition. Franz Kafka is a name that unfamiliar to few, but in his own time there weren’t many speaking his name with any great esteem. Kafka’s work is recognized now and his legacy is enduring, but he is made the victim of our artistic frameworks. Kafka’s style was uncompromising, from Metamorphosis to A Report to an Academy, his voice was distinct. His creation was nothing short of his own, and his ponderings are magnificent. Effortlessly toeing the line between the disturbingly morose and the philosophically complex, there is a constant discussion within Kafka’s texts that show a need to understand the nature of his own freedom as it is bounded by his personal obligations and their moral weight. The validity of his work has little relevance to the nature of this discussion either way, what is decided is its intimate nature. Kafka has torn a piece of himself off to present to the world, and he was left to go quietly into the night, only to be seen as a genius long after his passing. 

When we turn our eye to another prominent literary figure, Gertrude Stein, we can see a similar trajectory. While Stein had admirers amongst for her entire career, it was not until late into her journey as a writer that she garnered widespread acclaim. It was with the release of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas that she was truly seen by the public, and not for any good reason. The particular work was one that wasn’t driven by desire for expression, but in her own words out of a desire to make money. Stein wrote the book to be digested easily by the public, and to line her pockets after a far less lucrative and more creative career as an author. This particular work however, inspired a great deal of interest in her previous works. There is no deeper disappointment than to see that an artists expression is received weakly until they make an attempt to be received without expression at all.

In this great field of literature, I’ve cherry picked two particular authors to support the damage that reception has done to expression. The artist who is unwavering in his being was left to die quietly, while that artist who went out of her way to open the door to audiences was rewarded with great admiration in her lifetime. There is a definitive problem in our approach. 

We’ve found ourselves not recognizing those artists who take paths entirely of their own. The individuals like Kafka are left to live entirely devoid of the acclaim they may deserve because they haven’t put in the extra step to create an approachable stepping stone to their collected works. This exact idea is on full display with Stein’s incredible widespread acclaim following her attempt to creat an artistically stunted work that she believed, rightly so, would make her wealthy in a way that nothing she had done before had. This idea is not nearly restricted to Literature, it extends to all mediums of art in only the most depressing way.

When one is asked to think about the most recognizable visual artists of all time, Vincent Van Gogh is likely to be among those whose images are conjured. The man is seen today as one of the most influential and unique painters of all time, but in his lifetime he, like Kafka, was left to live without being seen on the scale that many today would say he deserved. While it is true that he did begin to see acclaim while he still lived, this wasn’t the case for the vast majority of his life. The beginnings of his rise to the status we know him to have today began only in his last year, and took many years after to fully develop. His devotion to the very specific and innovative style of his work was no help to this matter, he was outside the artistic framework that many at the time were expecting to such a great degree, that he alienated audiences. There was a far easier path to fame and fortune for the man, if only he had decided to play by the rules and create the uninspired before he showed off the immense talent that all today know him to have had.

The path from predictable to unpredictable and acclaim is no clearer than in the example of Jackson Pollock. While not remembered today for his early works, he began his career in surrealist abstraction establishing his capacity to play the game, before moving to the infamous action painting he was known for. Pollock had a clear understanding of what it takes to be recognized in this art culture, and followed the exact blueprint for success. He proved his worth to critics, and then he ventured into a burgeoning artistic wave, and the critics followed on the faith that what he was doing was entirely intentional and calculated because of his capacity to succeed in a risk free way. Although there are many today that still don’t like the works of Pollock’s later career, its undeniable that its been accepted into the pop cultural canon; his action painting pieces have fetched hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years.

Lets look to one more artistic medium, as far as music goes, no song is more infamous within a band’s discography than Creep, by Radiohead. The song was written to be a chart topper, as admitted by frontman Thom Yorke, and its become despised by the band for doing it so successfully. For years the band has refused to play the song in concert. Thom Yorke publicly despised the acclaim that came with the success of creep, the song is their most popular of all time, and in the years after its release, it was the reference point for everything they wrote. The song did catapult the band into stardom, but its a mark on their career that they aren’t particularly happy about. The song isn’t representative of the band’s sound, but it is still to many the first that comes to mind when Radiohead is brought up.

Acoustic ladyland, in all of their magnificence, has a career of critical acclaim without maintaining even two thousand monthly listeners on spotify. The band was born out of the desire for a few musicians to create some jazz covers of jimi hendrix songs, hence the name, but from their they embarked on a beautiful journey creating some of the most astounding avant jazz, and punk jazz ever recorded in my humble opinion. For these efforts they have many accolades to their name, though the band hasn’t been together for over 10 years now, the members have each moved on to new musical ventures that are far more commercially successful. It is this band that drives me to believe the way that we see art is so deeply wrong. My taste may not be everyone’s taste, but surely there are more than a few thousand people on planet earth who have ears to tolerate such an innovative work of industrial and noise influenced jazz riddled with beautiful harmonies and gorgeous songwriting that is on display on their album Skinny Grin. I’ll cut myself short as I know I have too much to say on this particular topic, but in short Acoustic Ladyland has created a masterpiece that is enjoyed by far too few, and their continued ventures into avant jazz after didn’t create the accessibility that the band needed to receive widespread notoriety. 

The path to mainstream success is clear in many avenues of art; create the expected, do it well, and then you have free reign to do as you please. It is, in my eyes, painful to see that artists are asked to sell their firstborn, in exchange for the freedom to express themselves truly, and to externalize whatever they wish. While its not a problem that is easily solvable, its not a problem I can even propose a solution for with the exception of awareness. If as a collective of consumers of art, we can all understand what it is that we are doing when we ask an artist to give up their artistic liberty at least once in their career, we may be able to recognize burgeoning artists better before they are crammed inside of our easily understandable box.

Works Cited

Ewell, Philip A. “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame.” Music Theory Online, 1 Sept. 2020, https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.2/mto.20.26.2.ewell.html. 

This text informed my perspective on the musical framework with which we judge a pieces validity. It also corroborates the ideas of a defined understanding of good art within our culture, creating room for artists to be boxed in when in search of recognition.

Ekelund, R. B., et al. “The ‘Death-Effect’ in Art Prices: A Demand-Side Exploration.” Journal of Cultural Economics, vol. 24, no. 4, 2000, pp. 283-300. JSTOR, www.jstor.org.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/stable/41810735. Accessed 23 Apr. 2023.

Provided me with the idea of a measurable increase in value of art when its progenitor is diseased. This makes recognition more easily achievable postmortem, and thusly more difficult in the artists lifetime, requiring additional steps as described within the paper.

Kirsch, Adam. “The Fight for Recognition.” Poetry, vol. 193, no. 2, 2008, pp. 143–48. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20608359. Accessed 23 Apr. 2023.

This text provided that stolen understanding that when one creates art, they seek to be recognized as an individual by true expression, with which they hope to be seen and acknowledged. In tandem with the framework they are subjected to, they must now create what they are inspired to create as well as what must be created for their truest art to be lent credibility.

Conrad, Bryce. “Gertrude Stein in the American Marketplace.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 19, no. 2, 1995, pp. 215–33. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3831589. Accessed 10 May 2023.

This article shows stein’s intention in writing the Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, ie mainstream popularity for the sake of monetary gain.

Dorn, Roland, and George Keyes. “Van Gogh Face to Face : The Portraits : Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890.” Internet Archive, 1 Jan. 1970, archive.org/details/vangoghfacetofac0000gogh/page/n9/mode/2up. 

There’s evidence of Van Gogh’s desire to innovate, while being met with only critique in his early career, without being stunted. He continued on this outsider path without seeing much encouragement at all with a few notable exceptions.

Malins, Steve. “Scuba Do.” Vox, Apr. 1995, pp. 16–20. 

This article puts on full display Yorke’s contempt for Creep as well as its affect on his career and mentality in the years following.

Success for an artist can mean a great many things, from financial freedom provided by great demand for their work, to the critical acclaim that laudatory efforts like awards might provide. Whatever the case may be for the individual artist, when success hinges on reception, as it does for the stated examples, the individual suffers regardless of whether or not they come to be successful by any such definition, because of notable biases maintained by the public. An artist’s capacity to succeed is heavily and wrongly dependant on two particular factors. The first of those factors being the artists ‘ability’, and the second being whether or not they happen to be deceased. 

Ability may at first seem to be an immutable factor; does the artist have skill or not? But in truth the idea of skill is no more than a convenient lie, behind the cover of which we can deny any such claim that we evaluate art on little more than whether or not it appeals to our personal ideals. To break things down to a more basal level, ability is an artists capacity to work within the rules set forward by whatever particular artistic tradition they are choosing to work within. Phillip A. Ewell in his paper, “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame,” discusses the ways in which the term music theory does not in fact describe the whole of music as it seems to imply, but instead explains the framework of european musicians from throughout the 18th century. It is is by this definitive label that we cast aside alternative frames, and leave ourselves out to dry with only one possible perspective through which to view new music. This is not to say that the world is devoid of talented and recognized musicians who do not abide by these rules, but within the popular culture of the western world, they are few and far between. Ewell uses staggering statistics about the prevalence of white people within the field of music theory to parallel the influence of europeans on the tradition of ‘music theory’. 90.4% of people employed full-time in the field are caucasian, and the field of music theory has long been almost singularly devoted to the carrying forward of those european musical styles on which the field of study was built. Ewell further explains the degree to which he himself as a black man is entrenched in the traditions of “white music theory” as a result of being a professor of music theory at Hunter College. The forwardness of his admission creates opportunity for his audience to be met on equal terms, they themselves likely to be just as set into the european tradition of music theory as the author. The recognition of this framework recategorizes ability within music to be the capacity for a musician to operate well within the guidelines set down by those european musicians credited with establishing the harmonic stylings now known as ‘music theory’.

It is Adam Kirsch’s claim that literature is truly little more than a power struggle. This medium is not music, but an artistic pursuit none the less, the perspective that the arena as a whole is not an expressive and free art form, but instead a power struggle between authors and audiences is a perfect encapsulation of what recognition and fame has done to those pursuits which lead to its acquisition. Kirsch opens his paper with the description of what was a newly published debut novel at the time, All the Sad Young Literary Men by Keith Gessen. The novel, Kirsch explains, was received simply as an “assertion of self”. It was not in fact a raw work of art, but instead a proclamation by Gessen that he was in fact deserving of fame. In the reception of this novel, many were quick to tear apart not the literary stylings of the text, but instead the validity of Gessen’s claim on recognition. Kirsch goes on to say that writing is not built on technical skill, whatever that may mean, but instead upon the capacity to communicate one’s self to audiences aiming to “have one’s very being confirmed by having it acknowledged by others”. When this idea is taken in conjunction with the framework presented by Ewell, the innate constraints put on art by its influences and the rules of the medium, the capacity for one to put themselves on full display in any artform is deeply eroded. 

Understanding mortality within art, particularly demand for that art, reveals a quite morbid trend. In The “Death-Effect” in art prices: A Demand-Side Exploration, there is verification of increase in both price and demand for works following an artists death. The study presented uses rigorous mathematical analysis of the time passed since the artist’s death in combination with the number of works up for auction on a given day, and finds that after an artist has passed, not only does the price for their works go up, but the demand for them does as well. The economic perspective here characterizes living artists as “durable goods monopolists” meaning they largely cant earn above competitive wages for their work, until it is no longer in production. The deeply exacting nature of this study lends great credibility to its findings, going as far as to recognize inconclusive findings in the early stages of the study before controlling for an additional unknown variable.

When the death effect is understood in conjunction with Kirsch’s view on the purpose of artistic endeavors, tragedy is made clear. An artist seeks recognition to have their very being confirmed and acknowledged, but it is after death that the greatest confirmation and acknowledgement takes place. An artists desire to be validated largely a feeble one, those looking to consume the art that may be made, have already decided that the value of such art is eroded by its progenitor’s maintained health. When further taken into the perspective of a limiting artistic framework, not only might an artist fail to be recognized within their own lifetime, but they may also be asked to filter their own being through the lens of what medium is most praised in their time. The art created sadly may come to reflect what art is demanded, and not what art is truly inspired. This assessment is in no way meant to diminish the works of the classically and much admired among painters singers and authors, but instead to bring to light the greater failure to recognize that art made outside of the bounds of any known frame, such that it may never be recognized as anything of great substance. The absolute stance on what makes art substantive has eroded our ability to see and enjoy what simply is.  

Works Cited

Ewell, Philip A. “Music Theory and the White Racial Frame.” Music Theory Online, 1 Sept. 2020, https://mtosmt.org/issues/mto.20.26.2/mto.20.26.2.ewell.html. 

Ekelund, R. B., et al. “The ‘Death-Effect’ in Art Prices: A Demand-Side Exploration.” Journal of Cultural Economics, vol. 24, no. 4, 2000, pp. 283-300. JSTOR, www.jstor.org.remote.baruch.cuny.edu/stable/41810735. Accessed 23 Apr. 2023.

Kirsch, Adam. “The Fight for Recognition.” Poetry, vol. 193, no. 2, 2008, pp. 143–48. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20608359. Accessed 23 Apr. 2023.

It was winter again; the crisp air bit at the boys septum. Red droplets began to paint the floor as he stepped inside to greet his father. Father saw his boy’s plight and retold the same old story of his tortured youth; nights spent out in the yard, his mother caring too much for the color of her carpet. As the tired tale plugs the boy’s frostbitten ears, he cuts Father off. 

“why did you choose to have children?”

Father spoke that day. The stones spat from the great sphynx’s mouth crushed the boy, liquified on impact.

“To have children is the most narcissistic thing that a man can do,” Father responded, gazing sympathetically at the puddle of his son. 

The boy solemnly vowed, as only a child can, to live without children. He decided he would never perpetuate this senseless and aimless voyage upon another generation. The boy congealed, reconstituted by his newfound purpose. He sauntered off to his room, his dragging soles tore up the hardwood in his wake. The boy was driven. Words began flowing, sentences began arranging themselves in his head. His treatise came into focus, he began to organize his thoughts: the time of man was over.

This is what he wrote:

Captain lays quietly, hegemony cleaved of his freight. The volume low and focus diluted, his villages are pillaged, his honors are scavenged; he paints the deck silently all the while. The work he poured and the passion of his personage lay varnish to the sea stained planks. He leaks thick like oil. I’m of his ilk, a man all the same, and our rivers run brackish, our basins muddy, our reservoirs are left unattended. Banks erode, it's time to cash out. Unperturbed passers by comment on the beauty of that orange reflected by the glistening body. The lamps have been knocked over and the hull is ablaze. Let us go quickly. Walk together into that calm we all so crave. That bleak and dreary endlessly delicious nothing we all fear returning to. Let us claim this chapter for ourselves. Let us be the the first to choose the end.

As blood dripped onto the page, and blotted out those last words, the boy saw himself clearly. Sitting calmly in the warmth of his home. He felt the walls around him with more and more clarity as the blood pooled on his page. He saw that he may be only for Father to feel purpose, but he was now and he always will have been. There’s no perfect fulfillment swelling within him. No sense of completion to his thoughts, but a throughway for them has been presented. The boy bleeds exactly as his father, but in the warmth and comfort of Father’s own home. 

There was confluence within the boy. He felt sustained by the constant confusion. He had purpose definitively, he was born for his father to have purpose. Life’s great question is seems to be answered, but theres no change in his being. Nirvana hasn’t been reached, enlightenment definitely isn’t had. Theres no sense to his knowing why. It was time for him to concede this value he’s given to purpose. He wasn’t asking anymore, he didn’t need to know. 

As the child sat back, he let his thoughts wander, he picked up his pen once more, and scrawled through the crimson beads on his page. He to satisfy only his own mind, and quell the thoughtlessness running through his head. He felt put in his place, the hopelessness pervasive. He began to connect the scarlet dots on the page. The smearing blood soaked into the paper, covering every word he wrote. He read back his work, or what was left behind. His found poem, was shorter than most. Let us be.

Calm washed over the newborn babe, every stimulus was a wonder and there was nothing but inconsequence. Understanding was anywhere but here, and the boy was here to stay.