I’m currently travelling around Nothern Italy and finding it difficult to remain unmoved by the grand, labour-intensive, multi-generational artworks that were made during the middle ages and renaissance period, almost 700 years ago. I’m not religious, but the work done in service of religion – the architecture, the sculpting, the painting, the music, is, I think, objectively extraordinary. Not just in quality, but in volume, too.
When I think of the big projects that are burning a hole in my brain, like that 300 page graphic novel I need to write, having something divine would indeed be quite useful. A church or god to please, or an eternal hellfire to avoid would no doubt provide the impetus to make the work.
Some of us wait for book contracts to be signed, to be noticed on social media, or we wait for those infrequent but intense ‘bursts of creativity’. In a secular world that worships money (or, at least, uses it as a measure of the success of a work), how does one find another reason to begin, make, and share projects that require extraordinary amounts of patience and labour?
It’s easy, in today’s hustle culture, to lose faith in art for art’s sake. If no one buys my work, is it worth anything? Is it any good? Am I any good? But perhaps all we need is to replace capitalism with humanism – a faith that great, good, and bad works of art help us all connect with one another, either in this life, or with those who follow us when we’re gone.
Now that’s something worth working for.