Art vs. Real Life - Being a "Creative Person" Is a Bad Excuse

For artists there seem to the two worlds: the world of art and "real life". While it might be legitimate to enjoy the former more than the latter it's dangerous to neglect one's everyday duties and responsibilities ...

If you don't care about anything else than your art,
you're destroying your own life and that of your loved ones.

Sometimes artists seem to live in another world. Here are all the hustles, daily needs and responsibilities - and there is that world of beauty and imagination. There is that world of creativity and endless possibilities. That world without limits.

We tend to glorify that world. But is there really no danger in it?

The Guilty Pleasure of Lowbrow Art

People often like to differentiate between highbrow art and lowbrow art and look down on the latter. But is it really that low? Doesn't it have an important function in our lives? Do we really have to feel ashamed for enjoying it?

Many highbrow individuals enjoy lowbrow art as some kind of "guilty pleasure".

Having a master's degree in literature, I often feel obliged to adore highbrow art. Which I often do. Yet what I sometimes also adore is lowbrow art, even though I agree with all those critics saying it's garbage.

And I know I'm not alone. There are many fans of Fifty Shades of Grey who are intelligent, highly educated people, perfectly aware of all its flaws. But they enjoy the series nonetheless. As some kind of guilty pleasure.

So if lowbrow art does find fans among people who typically aren't supposed to like it - Is it still lowbrow art?

Blackwashing Is Racist Too

Whitewashing is just simply weird, ridiculous, racist and unnecessary. So … let's turn the tables and make justice by "blackwashing"? Well, I'm afraid that it's a horrible and extremely racist idea: Because blackwashing means denying racism.

Who else wants to see big-budget movies and TV shows about exciting events like the Haitian Revolution?

Racism is a horrible thing. I believe this is something we can all agree on. Yet racism is also part of our history. And part of the history of art as well. One might think that in 2018 it should be in the past. Yet, apparently, it isn't.

The Ridiculousness of Whitewashing

Sadly, such things as "whitewashing" still exist. This term is used in various contexts, but in general it means: replacing coloured people with white people. When a white person is cast for the role of a coloured person in a movie it's whitewashing. When a character's race is changed from coloured to white it's whitewashing. When the creators don't seem to have the guts to make a character fully coloured and give him or her one white parent (so that the character is not too coloured) it's whitewashing as well.

What Is Artistic Success?

There isn't only one way to be successful as an artist. Even though making a living through one's art and getting praise seems like a universal ideal, it is not. So what is your definition of artistic success? Here are some thoughts ...

Chaliapin was an extremely successful opera singer. And for a reason!
He indeed was very talented and had a beautiful voice.

There are artists and artists. Some are considered successful, but in reality are unhappy. Some are unknown, but happy. Some can pay their bills from what they earn. Some don't earn anything. Some dream of worldwide fame, but never get it. Some don't even think about getting famous, but they get "discovered". Some have talent, others not really. Some love their art, others think it's never good enough.

Good and Evil in Stories

Interesting, complex characters aren't "grey", since grey is still only a mixture of black and white. Good characters have colour. And for that storytellers need to shift more towards an alternative worldview ...

The very idea that there is only one true god expresses that
there is only one right way to think and to live and everything else is bad and linked to evil forces.

One advice storytellers often hear is not to make their characters black or white but grey. Everybody seems to be fed up with shiny, good, pretty heroes fighting evil queens, overlords and their ugly henchmen. So the advice is to put both good and evil into one's own characters, to blend black and white into various shades of grey. This, people say, turns two-dimensional characters into complex three-dimensional characters.

However, what people often forget is that grey is, still, a mixture of black and white. It technically isn't even a colour. "Grey" is still a symptom of a two-dimensional, even deeply religious worldview.

Good, Evil and Religion

I'm not quite sure when this binary perception of the world first was created, but there's no denying that monotheistic religions eagerly make use of it. The very idea that there is only one true god expresses that there is only one right way to think and to live and everything else is bad and linked to evil forces.

Are Artists an Intellectual and Moral Authority?

Famous artists are often treated like some kind of superhumans with an accordingly superhuman authority, even on subjects they have nothing to do with. What are the consequences?

We can't trust anyone expressing his or her opinion publicly.
And how can we consider someone so untrustworthy an intellectual and moral authority?

You see this quote often. Artists, let's say the actors Ex and Why, say that Donald Trump is bad, that everyone should work together to fight world hunger, cancer and dictatorships, that misogyny is horrible and so on. And for some reason the more widely known Ex and Why are, the more weight their words get. As if famous artists weren't just normal humans like you and me.

Getting famous people to support one's cause is an old, widely known and widely used marketing strategy that benefits both sides: People, organizations and everyone whose agenda Ex and Why support get more attention and more money (if they collect donations). And since artists usually support causes that are considered good by most people, they get more positive attention by the media, more popularity and eventually more money.

Famous artists are people looked up to. Their opinion matters. Even if it is wrong, opportunistic or just a marketing strategy. Isn't it questionable?

Why Is Art Lying?

When we were little artworks taught us lessons about the world that turned out to be lies as we grew older. Every one of us has faced such disappointments in life. Every one of us knows how they hurt. So why do we keep passing these lies on to younger generations?

We keep passing on stories about great heroes from generation to generation. - Why?

Last week I had a discussion with a colleague who said she was disappointed in men. She is not the first woman I heard saying this. And definitely not the last. Moreover, I was disappointed in men too, and I've come across quite a few men who said they were disappointed in women. It seems that from a certain age on most of us are disappointed, be it in love or another area of life.

The culprit here is not other people or this oh-so-cruel world but rather our own expectations. Expectations shaped by the first years of our life. Expectations to some extent shaped by the stories, myths and motifs we were exposed to as children.

Sooner or later, however, we get a taste of the real world. We learn that all those stories about great heroes slaying dragons, true love and the good always defeating evil are lies. This realization is often traumatizing. So why do we keep telling those lies from generation to generation?

Art and Marketing - Know and Respect Your Audience!

We all want to be "free" when creating art, but we also want our work to be loved by a large audience. So should artists think about their audience's needs and wishes when creating their work?

If you want to be understood you have to speak the language of your audience.

I'm a writer and a hobby artist. I'm also an internet marketing manager. And as such I know that if you dream of building a large audience (which every artist does, let's be honest here) you have to start with your "product". If there generally aren't many people interested in the kind of work you do you have no right to complain about how little people care about your art. A "product" that is meant to be successful is always created with the "customer" in mind.

This, however, is the exact opposite of what people often consider "true art". Artists are expected to express themselves, completely ignoring what the audience wants. In fact, the audience is often considered uneducated and having a bad taste anyway. It's a very popular trope that an artist is doomed to be not understood by society.

Am I a Racist Writer?

There are many groups underrepresented in today's culture. As a woman, I often feel underrepresented. As a straight white person I'm objectively overrepresented. And I do underrepresent people of colour and the LGBT community in my own writing. So am I a bad person?

If you look closely and try to understand why underrepresentation happens you sooner or later
realize that you underrepresent other people as well ...

When I was seven or eight years old I made a curious observation: Almost all heroes of the stories I liked were male. Women and girls were usually nothing more than side-characters, prizes to be won or even some weird kind of background decoration. Needless to say, I rarely could identify with them. This may be one of the reasons why I have issues fully identifying with my gender: What I was told being female means never really matched what I wanted to be like. Fairytales, books, movies ... All those stories taught me to identify with men.

The Art of Imitation - Lack of Originality?

There are many different kinds of imitation in art. At the same time, we expect artworks to be original. But is it really a contradiction?

What makes realism and photography artistic is the original input by the artist.

Most people in the art community agree that tracing other people's drawings isn't the ideal form of art. Many people feel it's okay for learning purposes and I, too, have learned a lot by tracing and copying drawings and photos. Yet the problem with copying is that it lacks originality and thus isn't real art.

... Really?

Art Is Propaganda - Part II: Art and Democracy

Art has always been a tool for influencing people's thinking. What does such propaganda look like? Is it really bad? And can there even be art without propaganda? In Part II we discuss propaganda in democratic systems.

Every nation is built on propaganda.

Two weeks ago we discussed Soviet propaganda. The examples mentioned in that article contradict the famous ideal that art should be "free". And this is when I have to ask: What means "free"? As already mentioned, there's always an ideological context.

Growing up in Germany, I did believe that in a "free" country there is also "free" art. When I grew older and more experienced I realized that "free" art is nonexistent. As a multilingual and multicultural person I just kept noticing differences in artworks from different countries and their links to certain ideologies.

Art Is Propaganda - Part I: Art and Soviet Ideology

Art has always been a tool for influencing people's thinking. What does such propaganda look like? Is it really bad? And can there even be art without propaganda? In Part I we take a look at some examples from the Soviet Union.

Propaganda? - Definitely! But also a piece of art.

No matter what your opinion is - as soon as you express it there will always be someone saying you've been brainwashed by somebody's propaganda. This is just how the mind of a modern homo sapiens works:

"I have a very good reason to believe what I believe, so everyone who believes something else is wrong."

We all consider ourselves intelligent and sincerely believe that our own opinion is based on facts. The funny thing is, however, that a truly intelligent and critically thinking person would rather say:

"I know that I know nothing."

Let's be honest: Throughout all of human history people tried to influence each other and developed some well-functioning techniques. And since people tend to believe their personal experience and emotions most this is where the most skilled influencers strike.

Can Art Unite the World? - Creating and Perceiving Art from Different Perspectives

Our world is home to a sheer endless number of different cultures with
a vastly different understanding of moral values and aesthetics.

I often come across cliché phrases like: "That event united people from all over the world by their love for music/books/whatever." This is a nice image. The world united by art. But is it really possible?

Let's remember that we are all limited in our perception which is shaped by our surroundings. These surroundings also determine how we react to different pieces of art and they influence our own artworks. Let's ponder on this.

Relevance of Background

Art is often used for political statements. And just as often it merely reflects what people think. A few years ago I've read a novel about the everyday life of German teenagers in the 90's. It was an interesting read for the sake of studying German culture and I got an idea of what teenage life was like back then (very pampered and silly compared to that of Russian teens of that time), but there was one particular line that struck me: There was a moment in an inner monologue when the protagonist mentioned something like even Russians having Bubble Gum and Coca Cola nowadays. I was well aware that it was only natural for a West German teenager to believe that, but having experienced part of Russia's 90's myself, I actually felt like strangulating someone. Because no, back then we did not have Bubble Gum and Coca Cola, all we had was spaghetti and vegetables from my grandparents' garden, sometimes we even had nothing to eat but potatoes every day, and the ones who did have Bubble Gum and Coca Cola (or rather: people who could afford wasting their money on them) were the nouveau riche ******** who stopped at nothing for the sake of making money. (Even the Italian mafia was shocked about the unscrupulousness of their Russian "colleagues" who had taken over once the Soviet Union went down like the Titanic with 293,047,571 people on board drowning in despair.)

Art vs. Copyright - Why Piracy Is Bad, but Not Evil

Making money with one's own creations is a human right,
but there are also reasons for people to download pirated content.

Barely anyone would be happy to find his work published by someone else without having been asked for permission. There is much work behind every piece of art, so it absolutely makes sense that only the respective copyright holder has the right to decide what happens to an artwork.

However, art lives by sharing and exchange and this leads to many conflicts, especially when it comes to illegal distribution on the internet. Here you have the copyright holders who claim to have been robbed, pirates who make money with content created by other people without paying for the license and those who download or stream pirated content for various reasons.

Let's take a closer look at this problem.

Illegal Downloads and Streaming as Theft

A few years ago I've read an interview with a musician who said something like: "The song you download illegally is the bread I can't buy for my children tomorrow." Well, please allow me to state that this is just nonsense. The musician I'm talking about was a member of a band with worldwide fame. If a 13-year-old downloads one of his songs illegally because he gets only little allowance the musician's children won't die from hunger. I'm 100% sure about that.

Violence in Games and Other Media: Artistic Irresponsibility and the Forbidden Fruit Effect

People tend to show interest in things that are considered "bad".

Do violent games and TV shows spoil our youth? Every time this question pops up it triggers heated discussions. So it was only a matter of time until I felt I had to say something on this topic as well. And so ... Here are my two cents:

I'd like to start the discussion with a few things I believe we all can agree on:

· There are many people regularly enjoying violent media, but only a small percentage among them shows violent behaviour. 

· Countless studies prove that there actually is a link between media violence and violence in society. Whether gamers and fans of other violent media like it or not. However, it can't be said for sure whether violent media causes violence or whether it merely affects a pre-existing potential for violence. 

· Apart from violent media there are countless other factors that can lead to violent behaviour, such as domestic violence or child neglect, poverty, violent neighbourhood and so on. People can be taught to be aggressive and to accept such behaviour as normal. 

· There are people who are more aggressive and people who are more pacifistic just by nature. 

· Researching the effects of media violence is a difficult task, because these effects can't be seen immediately.

The Fascinating World of Fan Art - Why Creative Fans Do What They Do

The internet is a free space, and there are people with very diverse ideas and interests.

If you ever came across Harry Potter having SM sex with Draco Malfoy in tight leather underwear and your only reaction was to roll your eyes and say you've seen worse then you truly know what creative fans are capable of. I love fan art, I've been a fanfiction writer for over 10 years, and as an operator on Fanfiktion.de, a German fanfiction community, it's actually part of my job to struggle through really disturbing texts. And considering some rather traumatizing experiences I really understand why Anne Rice, the author of The Vampire Chronicles, used to forbid her fans to write fanfiction:

"I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes."

There are also copyright holders who generally don't mind fan art as long as it respects moral values. For instance, the example above isn't something Joanne K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, and Warner Bros. like to see, since the series is targeted at a younger audience that should be protected from adult content.

A Dark Path - Are Artists Egoists?

Artists walk a dark path. However, I would really like to believe that there is also a bright one.

In January I wondered whether artists are unhappy people and came to the conclusion that unhappiness is a crucial driving power behind art. Unhappiness makes an artist create art, so he can experience happiness through it. If a person is generally happy, he or she doesn't feel the need to experience happiness through anything else than life itself. And I have to admit that as a creative person I envy such people.

The problem with us creative people is that we often like to draw a line between ourselves and the rest of the world. Many of us are weird, isolated creatures who prefer some distant, non-existing dimensions to the real world where life happens. We don't accept life, and we don't accept things as they are. It hurts us when we don't get as much appreciation as we think we deserve while when we actually get appreciation it's never enough. Something is always wrong with the world: Our family is too poor, too rich, the situation in the art world is unpleasant, we are restricted by stupid laws, we aren't loved for what we want to be loved and people love things about us we don't love ourselves, the masses have a bad taste and everything is just unfair. Let's be honest, self-pity is the favourite hobby of the most of us.

Art and Responsibility - How Immoral Is Art Allowed to Be?

Moral education is one of the reasons - if not the main reason - why art even exists.

Morality and responsibility ... Let's be honest, art is known for both entertaining its audience with violence as well as for moral education. While there's a long tradition of showing war and battles in heroic light there is also another tradition with artists like the painter Vasily Vereshchagin who aimed to show the horrors of war in order to promote peace.

At the same time there's also law. For example, here in Germany those who describe violence as beautiful, romantic or otherwise positive and/or harmless can be sentenced to financial penalty or even go to prison for a year. Most countries in the world have similar laws. Being a moderator of Fanfiktion.de (FF.de), a German mass archive for fanfiction, prose and poetry, it's my task to lock stories that violate the German law and the rules of the website, for example by plagiarizing, downplaying rape or uploading pornographic texts. What's interesting about this is that many immature "writers" who obviously don't care about the rules or even the laws of the country they live in consider it an insolent restriction of their freedom. They say we're just power-mad and enjoy suppressing them, and our admin was even labelled as a dictator. And no, it isn't a joke.

Case Study: How the First "Hunger Games" Movie Turned Us Into Sadists

Metalepsis - How the First Hunger Games Movie Turned Us Into Sadists

Tomorrow is the big day when Mockingjay Part 2, the last part of the Hunger Games movie series, is going to be released. It seems like a good occasion to talk about the very first part. The one that unlike all the others had a very special effect.

Maybe it's just me; maybe you noticed it too. Maybe it was done consciously; maybe it was done unconsciously. But if you ask me, the effect of a narrative metalepsis is there, and this effect is the reason why the first movie impressed me so much. It's the effect of blurring the line between the viewer and what's happening on the screen.

In narratology we speak of a metalepsis when one narrative level enters another one. This happens, for example, when a narrator starts meddling in the affairs of the characters instead of just telling the story. Or when a novel is about the reader reading it. Or when the characters decide to kill their author for all the horrible things he did to them. Or when the reader somehow turns out to be a character in the story. ... You get the idea, right?

Art and PR - Why an Artist Needs Boldness to Be Successful

Shyness and modesty are very likely to become the death of an artist's career.

Right now it's a very personal matter. This is a very "young" blog, and I've started enough internet projects in my past to know that it takes much time and patience until it'll get at least a very little bit of attention. That I don't get many clicks and comments right now is actually what is to be expected, especially considering that I didn't do much PR for this blog. I should be rather surprised and happy that it actually got a few clicks without me doing anything.

It isn't like I don't have any ideas for how to promote my blog. I have more of them than time for implementation. The reason why I didn't do much so far is that I'm afraid like a total newbie. My train of thoughts is like this: "I've just started, there isn't much content yet, I'm still trying to figure out what works and what doesn't, so there isn't much I can offer to potential readers." To make it short: I'm afraid of getting readers while my blog is still in a beginning state.