I came across Alain Mabanckou’s blog when I first heard about this important contemporary African writer some time back. One essay on his blog struck me and directly relates to discussion I have had with students who were wondering about their choice of a career as ‘artist’. In the following lines I have translated part of the text of the writer from French and in the next section I discuss how this same advice is relevant to artists.
From Alain Mabanckou’s blog, words to an aspiring writer:
[…] Really speaking, there is no one but you who can free yourself and transform your uncertainties into creativity without waiting for the approbation of others or the benediction of those who have already edited books [or painted pictures]….
Concerning this topic, at the very beginning of my career, when I was carried away by doubt – like you today – and felt that the world was unjust, I always reflected on the words of the writer Rainer Maria Rilke [in his letters to a young poet], words that I ended up memorizing, and that I whisper to myself even today in my most desperate moments:
Nobody can advise or help you, nobody. There is only one way. Go inside yourself and find the need that makes you write: find out if its roots grow from the deepest parts of your heart. Truthfully confess to yourself: would you die if you were not allowed to write? Especially this: ask yourself at the darkest hour of your night: am I really forced to write [or make art]?
It is true that answers to these questions have serious implications. And yet, all those who claim to be creators need to answer with their soul and conscience as witness bearers. For my part, I do not know whether the text you will send me will be good or bad, publishable or not. I will let my most intimate conviction go to the depth of your text and I will listen to that small voice which will murmur this:
There is something unusual in these words and sentences, something slightly different, a universe enriched by the life of the author, a sentence that has been chiseled with a pneumatic drill, at the heart of night, when the whole neighbourhood complained of disturbance; sentences that I would want to appropriate for myself, taken as words that come from a proud and far-off mountain, words that keep the secret of inanimate things. An artistic temperament that would leave everything – life, wealth, recognition – sacrificed for his art at the cost of receiving ungratefulness in return. Ungratefulness says I? Yes, success in all fields depends on three factors: talent, work and chance. A writer can always be talented and work hard, but luck will have its say. It is the most fickle element; it comes too soon for some and too late for others, often after the death of the authors…
I will of course enjoy reading your texts, but I would ask you not to take the sincerity and rigor of my judgment as God-given. There is no worse creator than the one that refuses the challenge of being confronted and the wounds inflicted by truth. That at least is a flagrant, definite reality. […] (my translation).
To what extent does this also apply to visual artists? It is exactly the same need, the same compulsion to create something worthwhile. The same disregard for everything else – life, wealth, recognition. Or is it?
There are some differences between the visual arts and literary fiction and being aware of these can help the visual artist figure out his direction. Although it is possible to go into greater detail, the following can serve as a summary: literary fiction (long or short, as well as cinema and theater to some extent) relies on narration in the first place. This already establishes certain expectations – certain rules of the game – for both writer and reader/spectator. For the visual arts, it is very difficult to pin down any kind of expectation, which makes the task more difficult for the artist to engage his viewer.
Mabanckou writes of his expectation to come across an ‘unusual’ use of words and sentences (in other words, a different, unique way of making art, if we were to apply the above advice to the visual artist), but in the visual arts, this very idea of being ‘different’ has been an obsession – to have a unique ‘style’. This has been detrimental to much of modernist art – this exclusive emphasis on being recognizably ‘different’ at the expense of an interesting and rich multi-verse, what I call a rich ‘voice’ that can be heard through the images presented to the viewer.
Of course, if you are planning to make art as a hobby, a passe-temps, or as a business all the above advice is useless. But if you are serious about making art, then finding your ‘voice’, discovering what you like by ‘going into yourself’ is a advice worth remembering.
Visual Culture & Art in Mauritius 