I have an art dilemma.
Fortunately, my development as an artist over the last year or so has taken a positive turn. I have been blessed to get to know some professional artists whose work I admire, and who have been generous with time and advice. I have also found the style that I think suits me best (classical realism) and returned to the medium I have always had the most affection for, oils. Slowly, I am recovering from my Masters Degree, and I feel I am beginning to produce some art that I will not be embarrassed to leave behind when I die.
Here is the dilemma; I have too much old art. I have art that I have been dragging around with me from my earliest days in college. Lots of it. So much that I have been giving serious thought to burning most of it.
There are several good reasons to burn most of my old art, two of which are most relevant:
- It’s really awful
- It’s taking up lots of storage space and is deteriorating anyway.
Now, as soon as I thought of burning all this old art, I thought that a bonfire like this calls for inviting some friends over and hoisting a few brews. Kind of like a viking funeral, without the water.
So here is the dilemma; alot of my artist friends don’t think I should burn my old art at all. Some were SHOCKED that I would want to destroy evidencehistory in this way.
In deference to their concerns, I reassured them that I will be keeping enough old pieces to make plain to any future historian precisely how crappy my work was was at each stage of my early artistic development. I plan on keeping anything that I think is of genuine worth, along with one or two pieces typical of each period, no matter how horrendous.
Surely you writers out there have happily (with some relief?) round-filed old efforts, simply out of fear, that by some wicked twist of fate, they might end up associated with your name for all of history.
Do creative professionals have the freedom to put their name to what they like, and deep-six everything else? Isn’t that part of the creative process?
My mother is also an artist and periodically purges her art cabinet. She is ruthless and destroys anything she doesn’t consider worthy. Occasionally she will find a piece she can ressurect with a bit of tweeking, but otherwise it’s destined for the burn barrel. (she does pastels).
Your still life looks tasty!
I destroyed a bunch of drawings I did once. It would have been easy to store them and I think it was the wrong decision.
I try to keep as much of my stuff (both visual art and writing) as I can. I version all my writing and keep all the versions, and I have lots of my cartooning and illustration going back to college and high school.
I realize that in all likelihood I’m just burdening my kids with throwing this stuff out someday after I die, but I like the idea of them having it to go through at least once and maybe keep a bit of it.
Of course, oil paintings can take up a lot more space than cartoons and illustrations, especially if they’re mounted on stretchers.
Idea! If your friends are so horrified at the thought of your deep-sixing your old art, maybe they’d like to have some of it? 🙂
Gerard Manley Hopkins disposed of all the poetry he wrote before he joined the Jesuits – over a decades worth – even though his spiritual advisor told him it wasn’t necessary. When he started writing again, he had discovered his innovative and brilliant “sprung rhythm”. Only two or three of his earlier poems remain, and you canr eally see the difference. But it is his later stuff that marks him as an artist and a genius…the only people who mourn the loss of the early stuff are the lit majors looking for a new thesis.
If you wouldn’t want someone hanging it in their home or analysing the technique someday, then I say go ahead and burn it.
The thing is, there are two kinds of people who like art. One kind loves to preserve things, and the other kind doesn’t. Each kind is always going to horrify the other.
So yes, the creative artist has the right to destroy stuff. And the preserver types have the tendency to sneak in and save stuff. (Heh.)
I agree that your friends who are horrified should be given the chance to pick out at least one destined-for-the-pyre piece, if they are really that saddened.
hehe. donate it to st. vincent de paul. I’m sure there’s some poor college student somewhere that’d LOVE ot have some crappy work on their wall. I’m getting my masters in library science currently, and I have an appreciation for not destroying stuff. Of course, you’re not obligated to make it easy for history to find your stuff 😉
Though I will admit, there’s stuff of mine that’s mysteriously found it’s way into garbage bags never to be seen again. Namely my stuff from high school. oh the frighteningly bad stuff I wrote back then 🙂
T.S. Eliot also destroyed as much of his earlier work as he could. In his case it had nothing to do with a religious conversion: He became an Anglican only after the publication of Prufrock and The Waste Land. It was simply that he wished to leave behind only those poems that met his standards of literary quality. In spite of his efforts, some of his early poetry has come to light (or been dug up) recently and of course it has been worked over by critics. I have read a few excerpts in book reviews and they confirm the soundness of Eliot’s judgment.
Also, Brahams apparently would write a piece of music, wake up the next morning and couldn’t believe he wrote such trash and promptly chucked it on the fire.
Scott
“donate it to st. vincent de paul. I’m sure there’s some poor college student somewhere that’d LOVE ot have some crappy work on their wall.”
And just think: If you do this, then generations from now some descendant of that college student might take it on a future version of “The Antiques Roadshow” and weep copiously when told that the painting he was sure would earn him a mint is only a, uh, primitive early effort by some obscure artist named Tim Jones. 😉
Ansell Adams wanted his negatives to be burned upon his death. He knew that it was his darkroom technique that made his photographs so very luminous & unique & did not relish the thought of other photographers or students at some university making “their” versions of an Ansel Adams. He had the absolute right to request his negs be destroyed. Folks may recall that many in the art world were shocked & astonished that he’s request such a thing & many moved to halt the burning. But it was his right to make the request. Perhaps Adams didn’t want folks dissecting his darkroom technique? Vermeer didn’t leave his varnish recipe for the generations, did he? Great art has a mystique about it. Kate’s point about Hopkins is well worth noting in this regard. I’ve seen sketches by the Masters at museums frequently & they’re always pretty brilliant-looking; not what I would call a “rough sketch” or character study for a major work. One might get the impression they never drew badly! (Ah . . but what did Rembrandt throw out?!) I saw a pastel character sketch done by Mary Cassatt at the Denver Art Museum that, while lovely, was far inferior to her finished work. While it showed her process & technique, which is invaluable for an artist of her talent, it really didn’t seem to deserve the ornate frame it had acquired. (But it was my first Cassatt in-person, so I was quite impressed.)
Still, I see the point that some, at least, of your old paintings could be kept. I really like Steven’s suggestion of allowing folks to keep some of it for you. On a permanent basis. Were it my work, I’d edit down what they could choose from first – but that’s just me! Either way, you have the right to do with your old stuff what you will.
I’m sure you’ve prayed about it. Where has that led you?
But then how about the example of Emily Dickenson?
She left instructions with her sister to destroy all her letters and notes, but when Lavinia found the trunk with all of Emily’s poems, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Dickenson wrote her best work in the most private recesses of her being, and American literature is all the better for its seeing the light of day.
Of course her “outing” occurred after her death, so maybe you might want to just store your “formative period” works for that eventuality, and then let posterity be the judge.
well, there’s a plus side to destroying the bad stuff–when you’re famous and stuff, they’ll look back at y our early work and think you could do no wrong :0
I’m on the side of burning things too. Admittedly, I keep lots of my own student work, but if I move out of my current apartment, and haven’t got the attic space that my landlord gives me here, I don’t reckon I’ll feel bad about trashing any of my old bad stuff. Certainly I never look at it. Nobody looks at it. And if I (or you) become a famous artist someday, still almost nobody will look at it.
I mean, even as an educated artist I hardly care about, for instance, Michelangelo’s early student work. I care about the Sistine Chapel. Doesn’t everybody? And I have no idea what Vermeer’s sketches or student work looks like, cuz we only have a handful of his paintings in total. Is that a crying shame? I don’t think so. Let the bad stuff burn.
BTW, it’s a very beautiful painting you posted. My wife (also a painter) thinks the plum is a little too intense, but I’m quite keen on it. You have an on-line gallery yet? I’d love to see more.
Adm D
Paint over them. Hundreds of years from now, earnest art historians will use their most sophisticated technology to peer beneath the surface of your surviving paintings in an attempt to discover these “lost masterpieces”.