Okay…

Aside from the fact that it is really stupid and cruel to say this to a student taking your course on creativity, and I was stupid enough to listen to him without objecting…Aside from all that, when Robert Fritz says artists can’t use art to work out their problems, I say, Balderdash! SAYS WHO? SAYS WHO?!!!

Can you imagine what the world would be like without artists who did NOT work out their problems in and through their art?  A world without the likes of, and I am just selecting a few very famous examples from all over the art world:

Edvard Munck’s numerous depictions…

Just in case you doubt that he was rendering his emotional turmoil in pastel and paint, he wrote these sentences on the frame of one of the four known original versions of  what the world now knows as
The Scream:

I was walking along the road with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.^[9]

And where would the world of poetry be without Sylvia Plath.  Surely it would be a milder and less rich place without her magnificent and moving poem, “Daddy”, which I will quote only in part below:

A contemporary poet who has for many years mined her life and traumas for art, is undeniably Sharon Olds. But one poet who made art out of exquisite spiritual agonies was the British Jesuit convert,
Gerard Manley Hopkins in the mid-1800s, who wrote what are now called The Terrible Sonnets, terrible because they portray with astonishing depth the  suffering and spiritual anguish he experienced as a parish priest going through the dark night  of the soul. I do not know of any poet, then or now, who has done it better.

This is one of my all-time favorites of Hopkins. But you really need to read it aloud…

Francisco Goya Saturn Devouring Son

But as Robert Fritz said to me in class, and I stupidly took to heart, “ARTISTS CAN’T USE ART TO WORK OUT  PROBLEMS”…

Geee, they can’t? How dumb of me to think they can and do it, all the time.

Remember Franz Kafka? Why do I think he too might have been dealing with his authoritarian father in  such books as THE TRIAL, THE CASTLE, THE PENAL COLONY or a story like “The Hunger Artist”…No, that is impossible, right? After all, artists cannot and do not do such things, not real artists…Not according to Robert Fritz, who is the arbiter of all things art!

Songwriters are notorious for displaying their hearts on their sleeves, as most of us know. But VIc Chesnutt, who later committed suicide, did this in spades, with his song, “Coward.” This song is far too raw and painful to me to place it here as a sound file. But I will give you the lyrics and tell you to look for a version of Vic singing it, as no one can do it better.

The courage of the coward
Is greater than all others
A scaredy-cat’ll scratch ‘im
If you back ‘im in a corner
But I ,I ,I, I am a coward
I, I, I am a coward
Courage born of despair and impotence
Submissive dogs can
Lash out in fear and be
Very, very dangerous
But I ,I ,I, I am a coward
I, I, I am a coward

Anyhow, I think I have made a case for stating that art — which can be used for a great many purposes,  in fact can be used in whatever fashion and for whatever use you want to employ it, because truly there are no rules — most certainly one can work out one’s problems in and through using art. What better way to do so in fact? Better than taking a load of guns and shooting up the nearest  _________! (fill in the blank with the most recent mass shooting locale.)

I welcome my readers to send me examples of artists who expressed themselves or used their problems to make art.  I will add them to the list, especially if you provide a link to an example of their work.

Much love to all,

Pamela Spiro Wagner

Oh, I plum forgot! Here is my own example of using art to deal with problems: