So I was out, lurking the interwebs as I’m wont to do, when I stumbled across a quote from some big shot in the art world. No, I don’t remember who said it, or exactly where I found it, but it’s been stuck in my mind ever since.

The gist of this quote was the the art history books for the century had already been written and in a hundred years, people would only remember x,y, and z artists, and everyone else would be a footnote, at best. End of story.

Umm, excuse me? Who are you? God?

Do you have the awesome power and ability to predict the future? If so, wanna tell me what next week’s winning lottery numbers are? Cus I could do with the cash.

The awful, snarky part of me wants to rip this guy apart. Because I’m nice like that.

But I’m going to hold off on the snark fireworks for a bit to just kind of explore what this statement means. And why it pisses me off so much, without resorting to just grumbling “Asshat” under my breath for half an hour.

My first issue with this statement

Dude, I don’t care who you are – you cannot predict the future. You have no freaking clue who’s gonna be in the history books a hundred years from now. Did people think the Impressionists would be in the history books? Van Gogh? Even Vermeer for pete’s sake. Everyone forgot he existed for a couple centuries, and now look at him. Movies, books, the whole shebang.

You cannot predict what people are going to think of you in the future. Two hundred years from now, people could be laughing their ass off at our art today. Mind you, two hundred years from now, we could have successfully blown ourselves up too. So maybe nobody’s laughing.

So it just strikes me as a really pompous, know-it-all statement, and statements like that irritate me. Because you just don’t know. So stop acting like you’re God, or something.

My second issue with this statement

It kind of infers that the rest of us should just go home because we’re never going to be a big deal. Sorry kids. All the really good ideas have been taken. All the really good art has already been made. See ya ’round.

Yeah, according to you. But you don’t know what’s going to be thought of next. You don’t know what the next big idea is. Maybe I’ll have it. Maybe you’ll have it. Did Jackson Pollock wake up one day and think, “Oh yeah. This throwing paint on the canvas thing is so the next big idea. History will remember me for centuries. I am revolutionizing the art world! Raaa!”

Probably not. (Well, maybe he did. I don’t know.) But the odds are, he was just playing with another idea. Just another way to express himself.

I didn’t become an artist to revolutionize the art world. I became an artist to become a better me. To express myself, my views, my world, my feelings. History can take care of itself. I just wanna make stuff.

So please don’t belittle my desire to make stuff by implying that I’ll only ever be “a footnote, at best.”

My third issue with this statement

Okay, this might just devolve into mud slinging. I want to yell a lot of Who-the-hell-do-you-think-you-are’s at the person.

It just seems like such an asshat comment to make. And this whole system that we have of non-artists sitting around deciding whether the artist’s work is of value or not just strikes me as being really odd. (What is up with that anyways?)

I made it. It has value. And maybe you can’t see that value, or maybe it’s not valuable by your archaic, academic or esoteric standards, but it’s still my thing. My creativity. My expression. And maybe this one didn’t go so well, or that one needed more work, or maybe I just couldn’t get my mojo on that day, so that piece isn’t as good as the others.

But creativity is this life force, this unpredictable, growing, living, breathing thing. Some days, it’s gonna swoop through you and take you on a ride, and other days it’ll only be a trickle, maybe even  memory. But you can’t box it. You can’t stick it into neat little cubes, and call it a day.

And you certainly can’t stand on your stupid soapbox and tell me that I’ll only be a footnote in history books of art.

Besides, so what if I am? At least I enjoyed the journey. I’ll be the happiest little footnote there is.