A reader poses a hypothetical question to Matt: What would be preferable: to have an artwork which one knows is second-rate be selected to hang in the Guggenheim, or to have a work which one knows is a masterpiece to hang in one’s studio, unseen and unappreciated by the world?
Matt responds:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and ideas of what is beautiful or important change drastically from generation to generation. What was great before becomes mundane now. What was scorned before becomes the greatest thing since sliced bread.
To try to figure out why things happen is futile. I think things happen because they happen. To try to figure out why mankind does anything at all is to buy a ticket to the madhouse. The thing I pray for constantly and keep foremost in my mind is tolerance and acceptance. So if the greatest thing I’ve ever done sits in the bathroom of my house, and something that I think is a pile of shit is in the greatest museum of the world, then frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn. Both of them are my children. I love them both, I created them both, and they both make their own statements. Who interprets the statements and gives them a grade of A, or C, or F-minus, is immaterial.
The challenge to me is to make the one in the Guggenheim as good as the one on my bathroom wall. I have to be the critic. Am I really and truly doing the best I can possibly do at this point in time, on every piece I do? That, to me, is the challenge to any artist. Every day we are challenged by whatever vehicles we are using to tell the story we’re telling. And that gets into another whole series of questions. Who are really the keepers of history? Is history really written by the victors? Can we trust the historians to tell how things were?
If anything, that is the real job that the artist has: to use his or her eyes, education, culture, and temperament to be the observer of the human condition and present it in the particular that the artist feels. If a historian hundreds of years from now could look at different works of art in their archaeological digs through civilization, they will pretty much be able to figure out what was on the common person’s mind. That is an important part of the calling of the artist. Where it hangs while we’re alive, is in large part immaterial. Who looks at it today, who applauds it and writes about it and buys it, might make for good, ego-building stuff while you’re rolling around with your imaginary crown on, but I don’t think it means squat in the overall scheme. We don’t even know who built the pyramids.
I think we should just all keep trying, succeeding or not succeeding, but not letting any system deter us from what we think we should do in the way of exploration of your art-self. The art-self is one of the masks we wear. We have to wear certain things to look like an artist. To my way of thinking, we should look like what we feel like. If that means an undertaker’s suit or a clown suit, who cares?
Matt