450. Artists And Artworks

The artist regards a recently completed artwork with a certain pleasure. Still entranced by the intuitive sense of beauty and truth that guided their creation, they feel a little joy. The artist feels they have captured something valuable in the work, and they rejoice both in the beauty they see in it and in the sense of having done something purposeful and good.

But when the artist turns to examine work they created years ago, they feel quite different. While they might still see some beauty and truth in it, they are dominated by their judgments of the work. They can see how it deviates substantially from their present understanding. The artist would never make this work in the same way today. Different choices would emerge as the artist is no longer the same as they once were — with greater experience, their awareness has grown to include more.

Seeing the old work might make the artist feel bad. It seems less worthy than it was, as though it has lost some of the value it once held. This feeling is a kind of suffering that arises from attachment to the desire for their work to be the best that it possibly can be. Only the latest work, the one that is closest to their present sense of truth and perfection can be viewed with unmitigated joy.

Every artist who is open and attentive will necessarily become more aware with experience. And this means their work will continuously improve. What it is created today will not be the best by tomorrow’s standard. Were the artist to anticipate that their work today will eventually seem just as flawed as anything they have created in the past, they might stop creating altogether. For then their attachment will have produced another form of suffering: the anxiety that nothing they make will ever be good enough.

To actively create, the artist cannot be consumed by attachment. There has to be at least some part of them that is free enough from suffering to creatively engage with their medium and practice it regularly. To allow for future works to get better and to see past works as valuable steps along the way is essential to the possibility of creativity itself.