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Is it possible to produce great art without sacrificing your families needs?
I love photography and I also like to read about great photographers. I just read a biography of Dorthea Lange, the photographer who took the photo Migrant Mother in the 1930’s. It is a powerful and wonderful photograph that has few equals for telling a story that needs to be told. It is also a great photograph. I have always been captivated by her work.
What struck me about the book is that success as a photographer was inversely related to her success as a parent. She spent little time with her children and in order to complete her work she had to have her children raised by others. Now remember I said success as a patent and not mother. Famous male photographers from Walker Evans to Ansel Adams to Robert Capa all have had to either forgo family or to ignore the family that they had. I don’t think that this is a gender thing.
We all look at the photographic results and adore the picture without thinking about the costs. Are the above individuals unique or is there a Faustian bargain that is necessary to create amazing art? Is the bargin worth it?
David Hamilton 20+
If you want to be a great photographer, you need to pick a partner that will travel the world with you homeschooling your kids. It doesn't have to be a woman, i'm a productive guy with a sharp wit, but if I meet a beautiful talented artist that makes a good living, I'll follow her around and be a houseband. A person can work sixty hours a week and still be a parent, if their partner is not just picking up the slack but coming up with engaging ways for the family to spend time in what little time you have. Basically, i think it takes 2 great people to make one great artist, craftsman, or employee/employer, without sacrificing being good parents. Both men and women seem to be refusing to admit that in modern culture.
Phillip McKay
David Saia
Libbey Koppinger
I am both an artist and a parent. The act of creation, whether biologically or artistically - is not without responsibility. The artist is NOT exempt from this. And in the case of the artists mentioned, the sacrifice is on the part of the children/spouse - not the wayward parent-artist. So in fact, the work created has more than a single person behind the vision and the work itself. It is the result of an ensemble effort - because the relationships we engage in, whether tended appropriately or not - have bearing on our work. We are influenced. And should give credit to it. Artists often talk about the relationship they have with the work they create - and this applies as well to the lives they create or the children/families they belong to - whether present physically or not.
What is art? The best definition I recall is: "The well doing of that which needs to be done" So art is infused into every task, every act of creating, the entirety of our lives.
The arts are largely rooted in the realm of intangibility. The mystery is somehow captivating, but not an excuse for abandonment. Scientists will tell you they have the same compulsion to understand, bookkeepers to balance ledgers, salesmen to sell - these professions are no more or less valuable endeavors than that of the ballerina, the musician, or the photographer for example.
I think a truly great work of art is born from problem solving AND inspiration. Neither of those things are really achieved if a person ignores their family. But that brings me back to my original statement - we will never know what might have been achieved, only what is.
David Saia
Libbey Koppinger
The other choice is to CHOOSE one or the other. An artist who cannot BE a parent, shouldn't have children.
People, especially children - aren't disposable.
There is nothing great about an artist who harms the innocent to answer the "muse" Through history, great artists have made conscious, and certainly painful choices to dedicate their lives to art - and even then, they find themselves in the position of having to earn a living in order to afford to create art. I don't believe the gifted are helped when they are excused from normalcy - I believe it harms them as both a person and an artist.
Along those lines ~ Michelangelo hated painting. But the Sistine Chapel was a paying job & it afforded him the marble he required to sculpt. Which of these endeavors is more "valuable?" His frescoes and paintings - so beautifully executed, with such inspired conceptual and thematic depth - of which he loathed every moment creating? or The sculptures - the work he adored, which spoke to him, which transformed him into a god-like life giver, freeing the figures from their marble casements, resulting in works of art unfathomably intense and poetic. Sculpture was his "rush" - but it had a price. Both resulted in important achievements for him and us.
Parenting is a joy and it's a job. It's often so hard - but the reward is beyond measure. For ourselves and the future.
I say never mistake what you do, with who you are.
It is possible to infuse art & parenting. But it comes at a price.
That doesn't mean the art created is subpar, it simply means the artist has work harder.
Those who are given great gifts, have greater responsibility. Period.
Fritzie Reisner 10+
In some careers (looking beyond art), eminence may be achieved prior to having children, and then sustaining eminence has been possible with children. Scientists are coming to mind. I think Marie and Pierre Curie had an excellent marriage and a close relationship with their daughter, who followed her mother in winning a Nobel in science.
Richard Feynman achieved eminence in a loving, devoted marriage (wife died young) and then had children in a later marriage, doting on them at the same time as continuing eminent work, though his greatest achievements were before they were born.
Debra Smith 100+
If this is so, these people are inclined to focus on whatever their fixation is to the detriment of other things including people that they love. It is as though all of their energies gravitate to a narrow focus that allows them to 'forget' about or block out other things.
I think we should all hope for as much balance as we can achieve but that we are a product of our brains in some cases. Maybe those who have such great passions need to employ tools like calendars, scheduling and reminder notes to bring them away from their fixation into the world of people. I think that having a great body of work at the end of your life is one way to gain some meaning and satisfaction but it might pale in comparison to having cultivated loving relationships. It would be great to perserve and cultivate both before the end.
Eli Vidal
In the same way good art also creates conflicts between the artist, himself and his family. The more value it has in your life, the more conflicts it will draw.
Clint Pace
Fred Blum
Markus Suomela-Vaga
The creation of great art becomes almost an obsession, and as a result, many great artists do forego normal social ties in order to purse their aesthetic muse. On the other hand, you have many great artists who involved their families in what they did and are just as legendary.
For Adams or Capa or Lange, perhaps their subjects of interest drove them to travel far away in order to capture their vision. On the other hand, if their subjects were their family or friends, the discussion could well be the opposite. True art is driven by the need to create. For some, it can be done without foregoing family, while others need to leave everything behind in its pursuit. And for some, it involved leaving normal behaviour behind and living "in their heads" so to speak.
Juliette Zahn 30+