What makes one an artist?
Trying to answer this question is the goal for my column this week. It could be fun to tread this uninhibited and mind-wandering path, but I have reasons to believe it’s bad news for me.
If you look at my colleague Kelly Hotard’s column on the opposing page, you’ll see that this is a head-to-head debate. Not only I am supposed to write about personal challenges to me — I’m an artist-musician — but I have to do it with an opponent whose native language is English and has shown to be an outstanding critic of pop culture.
Although some of my fellow artists would always be willing to argue on possible definitions of what they are struggling to be, an artist is simply a communicator. But do not misunderstand — simply communicating something doesn’t make you an artist. Even if your product is selling, you still may not be an artist (take notice, pop culture).
Opposed to what many people perceive, there’s much objective and concrete work behind an artist’s will to communicate. The work of art is the final result of everyday work that can take months or years to mature. Sometimes this final “product” comes faster, but it doesn’t mean there’s no structure, thought, exercise or consideration behind it.
So, I’d gently nod to Kelly and say: “Sure, pop art can very much be art — there is a lot of work involved in Lady Gaga’s latest video clip, and she’s definitely communicating something.” But I’d also urge Miss Hotard and the pop-ingesting audience to consider adopting the term “entertainment.”
Every artist wants success, even if he or she won’t admit it. But I know pop artists are always dying to believe their work has more value than dollars in an account. After the thrill, they want to feel their work actually means something.
I’m advocating not for a specific genre of artist — like classical music — but for the fact that art is hard work. I live and work with people who are in an everyday journey to find how to communicate and express their beauty and concern with the world in their own ways.
Some of my peers are studying and working relentlessly, many times with scientific precision to offer a performance, an oeuvre and a glance of infinity to an audience for just a second.
I’m sure many of them will reach commercial success in different ways in their futures. I know others will remain in the academic environment developing their artistic activities and spreading their “gospels.”
In the post-Andy Warhol society, the point now is not if academic art is more valuable than pop art.
If an artist’s ultimate concern is either selling or academia, then he’s damned on both accounts.
I recently watched the documentary “Man on Wire” by director James Marsh. It’s about French artist Philippe Petit, a tightrope walker who walked on a wire between the two World Trade Center towers in the ’70s. His story shows us that his art fulfilled the purpose of stunning people, and the movie
itself makes us wonder about the meaning of several common things in life.
But when confronted with the “why?” factor from journalists after the act, he said, “There is no why. I did something magnificent, and you are giving me back a practical ‘why?'”
Here’s where I’ll try to tune myself in the duet with Kelly: If art is not helping people to renew their senses about life and the world around them, they might be uselessly egotistic.
But getting attention should be a consequence, not a purpose. Real art should come from serious, hardworking imaginaries who invoke beauty and employ technique and structure.
To paraphrase a recent quote from a musician friend of mine: “I work my ass off, don’t sleep and feel like some sort of restless monk. I wouldn’t change my struggle to live as an artist, even for all the hours of sleep in the world. And if someday things get easier, I will still look back and be thankful for the life I have today.”
Aspiring artists in modern culture are surrounded by get-known-quick schemes and YouTube dreams.
I’ll keep my cello, Kelly — you keep your Kanye.
Marcelo Vieira is a 32-year-old jazz cello graduate student from Brazil. Follow him on Twitter    @TDR_Mvieira.
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Contact Marcelo Vieira at [email protected]