Egotist or Imposter - The Misunderstood Relationship Between Art and Identity

Show Notes

Summary

Alex discusses the intricate dance between ego and identity in art, exploring how self-expression shapes both creator and audience. Through Frida Kahlo’s lens, he delves into the misunderstood relationship between art and self, challenging the notion of narcissism in creativity.

Transcript

The two Fridas sit on a bench, their hands clasped tightly. Left Frida, we’ll call her European Frida, is wearing a high-necked European-style wedding dress. Right Frida, Mexican Frida, wears a Tehuana dress, traditional to her Mexican heritage.

Both Fridas hearts are visible. Mexican Frida’s heart appears healthy whilst European Frida’s seems damaged, broken perhaps, and can be seen through a hole ripped in the breast of her dress. In her right hand, European Frida holds surgical forceps that have cut a major blood vessel from her heart, it leaks blood onto her wedding dress. Both hearts are linked by a single blood vessel. Mexican Frida holds a miniature portrait of her ex-husband, Mexican artist, Diego Rivera from whom she had recently divorced. A blood vessel connects to this portrait. Her dress is intact and clean.

Both Fridas stare resolutely at the viewer, seemingly defiant, yet, European Frida seems paler, diminished, frailer.

The painting The Two Fridas by iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo is awash with autobiographical symbolism. It conveys duality, as well as both symmetry and asymmetry. Strength and weakness, European and Mexican. It is redolent with pain from her divorce from her husband, but resolute and forthright in challenging that pain.

The artwork tells a tale of sorrow, but solidarity with ones self. Kahlo admitted it expressed her desperation and loneliness with the separation from Diego. But still she shows solidarity with herself, tender and comforting yet proud and supportive.

Of the 143 paintings that Kahlo produced in her lifetime, 55 were self portraits of some form, all depicting similarly expositional and confessional themes, exposing her personal life, political views, and her chronic and crippling health problems. She is famously quoted as saying “I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best.”

Here’s me rounding off episode 7 of this podcast, in which I talked about telling stories with art:

Paste clip.

I have a suspicion that Kahlo was autistic. We relate to others by relating ourselves. She was showing us herself so that we might better understand ourselves.

I’m not going to talk much about autism here, but it does highlight and aspect of the arts that is perhaps poorly understood, and by being so, often leads to artists hampering their own progress and stifling the ability of art to heal. That is Ego.

Narcissus was a mythological Greek dude who was ridiculously attractive. We was shown his own reflection in a pool of water by the Goddess of retribution Nemesis. This was the first time he’s ever seen himself in all his hotness. On seeing his delectable visage he immediately falls in love with himself and can’t tear his beautiful eyes away. Depending on which version of the myth you’re reading he either falls into the pool and drowns or wastes away. On the plus side, the gods posthumously transformed him to a flower that grows by the water’s edge.

Psychological diagnostic bible the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders aka DSM states the first criteria of narcissistic personality disorder as:

A grandiose sense of self-importance

Narcissism is a real thing as anyone who pays attention to the incessant ranting of Donald Trump will know. But would you call Frida Kahlo narcissistic? How about Vincent van Gough who produced 36 self-portraits? Or Rembrandt who produced nearly 80 self-portraits?

I talk about myself and my own journey a lot in this podcast. That’s partly because, this is me, this is my life, I started up a podcast about mental health and art because these are two things that are, for one reason or another, really important to me. But just as importantly, I want to help other people and one of the best ways to do that is to share your own stories so that others can empathise. It can help people with similar struggles to rationalise their own situations, or at the very least to feel like they’re not alone.

I don’t mind the sound of my voice. I’ve got used to it over the years and I do like the things I say, I like the things I write. And as I’ve said many times on this podcast, the reason you know that you’re producing good work is because you like it. And if you like it, then someone else is going to like it. But maybe this all comes across as a bit narcissistic. But we are all the stars of our own movie. And, whether or not you’ve got a planet size ego, you are the centre of your own universe. And through everything you’ve experienced; left your childhood home, found love, a career, had kids, one way or the other, you’re still viewing it from your perspective. It’s the only point of view that you’ve got. The best you can try to do is understand and rationalise and empathise with someone else’s situation.

Where our situations cross over, where we have aspects of our lives that overlap with a similar aspect of other people’s lives, then we can relate on that level and communicate and hopefully help each other out, or at least understand and empathise. Talking about yourself is important. It’s why therapy is such a big industry. You don’t have to have a big ego for that to be the case.

This is a podcast about art. And whether you are a creator or a consumer art is inherently personal and subjective.

I’ve talked before about how, when you share an artwork with the world, you let go of it and it takes on a life and meaning of its own. It’s not yours any more. The experience of it belongs to the viewer. It’s not really about you any more. But when you created it, it was. And from your perspective, it always will be.

As a creator it’s not unusual to find yourself in situation where someone sees a work you made and says something like, “I interpret this as a really cheerful, serene and affirming work” and you look at it and go, “no, mate, I was miserable when I made that. That was, like, the worst part of my life.” There’s always going to be some level of disconnect between you and your audience. And that’s just the nature of the beast.

But whether or not you communicate your motivations or the meaning behind a work of art, whether or not that’s understood or relatable by the people who viewed that art, you had those motivations. And you chose the subject, you chose the narrative, you chose the colours, the framing, you chose the length, the size, you chose the medium and the where and the when to show it. And all of those are very personal to you. It might just be personal to your life situation at the moment. Maybe you had to show it at that specific moment because that was the only time the exhibitions space was available. Maybe you painted a blue picture because that was the only colour of paint you had left. Maybe you made that haunting think-piece because you were at that moment, well, haunted.

All art is autobiographical, whether you want it to be or not. You may choose to try and obfuscate your true self or your true nature in your works, but that choice is autobiographical in itself.

The same is true for any act of creation by humans, be it a mathematical proof or the development of new technology or baking a loaf of bread. We put a flavour of ourselves in everything that we do.

Every one of note in culture is of note because of the choices that they’ve made based on the type of person they are, given the opportunities they were given. Our world centres around humans and humans have their stories and those stories all contribute to whatever impact that human has on the world. Be it, a tragic infant who never made it to their first birthday to someone who lived to 110 years old. In both instances, they made a fundamental impact on the world, the people around them, for better or for worse, and created reverberations that will be felt across people, communities and across time.

You might argue that, say, a documentary photographer or a realist landscape painter or a nature illustrator have a responsibility to transmit the subject honestly and accurately. To ultimately be invisible. Which they may well do. But in all these cases they still had to choose the subject, the framing, the rendering. And depending on how important they are within their field, they might be more important than their subject anyway.

The idea that a work of art is of the same value independently of the knowledge of who the creator is doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Say you owned a beautiful landscape painting that was given to you or you found at a car boot sale or something. You love it, but you don’t have that much attachment to it. It cost you a tenner or whatever. When you move house it just got chucked in the back of the van, and it’s seen its fair share of splatter of beverages from children or drunk uncles. What then if you, in a whim took it to the Antiques Roadshow only to discover that this is, in fact, a long-lost Constable. Auction value of a million quid plus. You’re saying that that painting hasn’t gone up in your estimation? That you don’t suddenly see details and flourishes in it that you didn’t see before? That you don’t start treating it reverently and with great care?

Identity matters in art. The very idea that Jimi Hendrix touched a particular guitar can exponentially increase its value. Andy Warhol never even set foot in the same room as many of the works of art attributed to him yet they still sell for tens of thousands. What matters is that he chose to depict those soup tins. The soup tins weren’t the point. The point was Warhol and his message. You can’t help but get in the way of your subject. The subject is only the subject because you made it so.

And this is a concept I’ve touched upon before and will likely do so many times again. The idea that you can separate an artwork from the artist and have it hold the same meaning and value is ridiculous. Art is created by humans as a means to interact with other humans. For a human interaction to occur there needs to be two sides to that communication. Despite how incredibly human like chatbots are getting, most people can tell when they’re talking to one, and would prefer to be talking to a real human in any case. Art is culture happens between and among humans. Not machines and humans. Not dolphins and humans. Not dogs and humans. Yes creation can have inherent beauty, worth, craftsmanship, but when that is disembodied from the person who created it it loses a large part of its meaning and therefore its cultural value. An artwork without an artist is just an object. Do you honestly think that Marcel Duchamp’s urinal would have the same cultural meaning if we didn’t know who put it there? What value are Banksy’s murals until we know that it was him who painted them?

This doesn’t mean that your creations are worthless until you share them. You still love them, they just carry no cultural currency. This also doesn’t mean that if you are largely unknown that your art is similarly valueless. Your art has value and utility to 100% of its existing audience. The same rules apply. If your painting turns up at a jumble sale without a signature, and a diehard fans sees it and is unable to attribute it to you, then they will view it of lower value.

So let me repeat: Everything you do, everything you create is, to at least some degree, about you. This doesn’t mean that all art is narcissistic. Quite the opposite. Rather than taking all the attention, you’re giving a piece of you away. If someone unknown to you experiences your creation in a book or at a gallery or in a theatre and you’re not there to suck up the accolades, or the derision for that matter, then your ego simply isn’t part of the equation. Most artists tend to be self-deprecating anyway, and therefore get slightly twitchy of someone hungrily consuming their art, especially if the artwork is quite personal, because the idea can feel like a violation. And many of us have nightmares about champagne sipping socialite art-establishment snobs delightfully denigrating our loved creations. Far from being an ego trip, at best its a terrifying ego rollercoaster and at worst ego destruction.

So not only can you not extract yourself from your art, it’s pretty essential that you are, to some degree at least, on show. And far from being narcissistic, in most cases the act is selfless to a destructive degree.

You should embrace this reality or at least accept it and not feel shy when your art expresses something directly about you. Celebrate that. Art is a means of communication. It is about conveying your experiences, vision, thoughts, your feelings, your point of view and worldview and communicating it to other people in some form.

So you’re out and about and you see something cool, like a stunning view, or an interesting happening, or some landmark. You take a picture with your phone, and send it to a friend, or share it on social saying look at the cool thing that I just saw. Maybe you strike a pose and make it a selfie. That act in itself is an act of creation. Because the act of creation itself is an act of choice. You choose what to photograph or video, you choose what to paint, you choose how to paint it, you choose what story to tell, how you tell and whether to put yourself in it.

This is just what we do. We as humans want, need to communicate with other humans. We want to tell people about our experiences, our successes, our landmarks, our nice lunch. No one really cares about that poorly framed photo of the Taj Mahal, they care that you took it because you were there looking hot in both senses of the word.

In fact, your humanity and your presence in your history, your life, your reputation, your influence, the colour of your skin, your height, the tone of your voice, these are all things that send signals to other humans about you and the thing that you’re conveying. And it’s inescapable. You can try and change that. But there’s only so far you can go with this.

Your communications, your interface with the world is your identity. Some choose to expose and mediate that via selfies and 30 second videos. Some choose to paint a bowl of fruit that took them weeks to create. Some dance. Some write erotic fan fiction about vampires.

The intersection of who you are as a person, and how you choose to portray yourself defines your message and how it’s perceived. This doesn’t always go to plan, Vanilla Ice springs to mind. But it is what it is. And it is you. Some folks gonna like that, some don’t.

Maybe you like what I make, how I present myself to the world. Maybe you don’t. I hope you do. But it’s not a prerequisite. This is just me. I do what I do. If you don’t like it, don’t listen.

At some point, I figured out that I’m fairly articulate and I’m very open with my own experiences, almost pathologically so. And I’ve used that both to my detriment and to my benefit. And starting up this podcast was a recognition of that. Despite the fact that I was odd and barely articulate when I was a kid, I’ve learned how to communicate pretty well. And therefore, in terms of carrying message by the medium of talking to people who are not in the same physical space as me, I am quite well placed. And part of that is me talking autobiographically. It’s a recognition of the part of myself that knows stuff, and likes to talk. And because of the way that I say things, people are inclined to listen and derive value from the things I say. At least I hope so.

Either way, this is how I choose to portray myself and is as much an expression of my creative identity as my paintings are.

I’ve got a bit of a ritual. Every year I make a submission to Portrait Artist of the Year. For those listeners not in the UK, this is a TV show where artists attempt to portray a celebrity sitter in 4 hours. It’s a pretty big thing for the UK arts community. To enter you submit a self-portrait. Five or six years ago I thought I was in with a chance. I paint people pretty well. So I made a self-portrait, a pretty good one, and submitted for judging. I was, of course, rejected. As I have been every year since. It’s become a bit of a grim annual ritual, but It’s been responsible for me producing 6 or 7 self-portraits that document my journey as both an artist and an individual through the intervening years. Before I started this podcast it was the closest thing I had to a diary. Each painting is distinct in style, reflecting my approach at that time. Each reflects my interests and obsessions of the time. Each shows me changing, ever so slightly, as a human.

And this, of course, was why Kahlo, Rembrandt, van Gough and many, many other artists produced self-portraits. No, not because they wanted to be on some reality TV show. But to explicitly document their journey in the way that they knew best how to do so.

But, of course, neither they nor I needed those self-portraits. I already have a document of my progression as an artist. It’s called all my other artworks. The self-portraits are among the least interesting of my works. Paradoxically, I find it difficult and uncomfortable depicting myself with any level of honesty or clarity. I just don’t think about myself as an entity in the real world. I don’t live out there, looking in. I live in here looking out. I have no idea how people see me, or how I would see myself were I able to step outside of myself for a while. The Alex that you are listening to now, and the Alex in those self-portraits is no more the real me than the Alex that turns up at job interviews or the one that lurks around awkwardly at his own art exhibitions. If, for whatever bizarre reason, you want a glimpse inside the mind of the real me, you have to look at my work as a whole. Like a giant quilt of outputs and experiences that will continue to expand until I keel over or find a more profitable hobby.

As is my habit, I’ve got a bit meta here, since I’m being autobiographical in an attempt to justify the autobiographic nature of my own work in an attempt to explain the autobiographic nature of creativity itself. All the while trying to convince you that I’m not a raving egomaniac. And maybe I am. But aren’t we all?

Of course the irony of all this talk about putting yourself on display being narcissistic, is that whereas most artists feel like imposters, narcissist are fakers who don’t have the capacity to realise that they’re imposters. In any arena, especially in the modern attention economy, the higher echelons are crammed with chancers and gobshites that have no real business being there, and have crowded out those that do. They make the most noise, dominating attention and discourse keeping everyone else out of contention. It’s arguable that professional art is at or near the top of the list of arenas crammed with narcissistic charlatans. I’d say that it was at the top, but the tech industry seems to have zoomed past in spectacular fashion.

This is a fact of the world, and the prevalence of chancers ebb and flows. What’s more frustrating is that true artists broadcast their authenticity whether they like it or not, and the consumer will pick up on it in a second if they try and grab a bit more limelight by compromising their individuality. It’s both a frustration and a compliment that true creatives are held to a higher standard. With great power comes great responsibility, but maybe small bank balances.

And as I’ve alluded to, the opposite of narcissism is imposter syndrome. It’s a subject that is a close companion to the subjects covered here. It’s such a big part of an artists daily existence that I think it’s worth at least a whole episode. So although it’s a natural progression to this conversation, I’ll leave that one for another day.

So what’s my point with all of this? Don’t be afraid to let you leak or even gush out into your work, because you’re going to whether you want to or not. You don’t have to repeatedly paint yourself like Frida Kahlo, or make yourself a living artwork like Yoko Ono or David Bowie. But if you try to remove yourself from your art, then you’re not only making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself but you’re also leaching out the most important bit, and the bit that everyone wants to see: you.

Worse, by trying to crowd yourself out of the process, the process will likely feel forced and artificial and will inevitably be less fulfilling. This can easily lead to frustration and fuel imposter syndrome. None of this bodes well for the therapeutic value of art. It’s also worth noting that you are not a fixed entity, and you will change over time. I covered this quite a bit in my episode on finding your voice. As you change, so should your voice, otherwise you’ll find yourself editing the real you out of your art anyway.

So make sure you’re there, now and always. It’s neither vain nor narcissistic to do so, in fact it’s necessary.

So you do you in all your glorious technicolour, and bollocks to the haters.

I’m off to record my first interview episode this afternoon. Hopefully that goes well and I will share it with y’all. Really looking forward to that. In the meantime, please like, review and share this podcast. Follow me on BlueSky alexlovelessartist.bsky.social. Support me on Patreon at patreon.com/alexloveless. I’m currently unemployed and making this podcast costs me money and a lot, so every little helps.

Thanks again and I’ll be back soon.