The Delusion of Art

Whenever I see a great or terrible work of art in any medium, a question recurs in my mind: "Why exactly did the artist want to create this? How and why did this come into the world?"

If you think about it, there's no compelling reason why any work of art should exist. As great as, say, Hamilton or the Mona Lisa or Game of Thrones are, they aren't curing diseases, providing shelter, winning wars, or generally improving the general welfare. They simply exist, for better or worse, to elevate culture.

A work of art is like a tree house: it has no real reason, no requirement to exist -- it doesn't fill any societal need at all -- except that someone at some point in time got the idea for it and then went about the difficult, delicate, sometimes exilerating, often frustrating work of creating it, hoping that people will like the finished product, and very often recruiting others along the way for assistance. Often, this assistance is financial.

One of my favorite books, as I've blogged about before, is Final Cut, about the movie debacle Heaven's Gate that destroyed United Artists. What's fascinating about it is that it's a keyhole view into the miserable, decidedly non-glamorous work of making a movie -- and how and why things can go so wrong. When you read it, you are mesmerized by the egomania and irresponsibility of the director, the bad decisions of the studio executives, the viciousness of the press, the careers and relationships made and destroyed, the complete delusion involved -- and for what? For a movie that, hopefully, a few people would pay a few bucks to see and spend a few hours at before going back about their lives. 

I just read a story about a massive Broadway musical debacle: three years ago, there was a new musical called Nerds about the early years of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Many thought it would be another Book of Mormon and it had been in the works for years -- work shopped, cast and rehearsed, and was just weeks away from debuting. And then? The money vanished, the show was cancelled, careers were deeply impacted -- and now there are lawsuits and all sorts of legal miseries. It's what happens when all of that effort fails and is for nought. It's about the dark side of creativity, the emptiness of failure. And for what? For something that didn't even need to exist in the first place.

As you read this story, you read about everything that goes into making not just this show but any piece of art: the hopes and dreams of the creators, their hard work to bring it into the world, the money and people who are needed to help it along the way -- and, most importantly, the delusion that everyone involved is required to have.

You have to be somewhat delusional to be an artist of any kind because, if you aren't, if you are strictly logical, no one would work on any show or big piece of art because ... why should anyone care? Why should this exist? Turning Victor Hugo's massive and depressing novel about failed French revolutionaries into a musical? Making a hip-hop musical about the Founding Fathers? Taking TS Eliot's book about cats and making that into a musical? The fact that people thought those were good ideas and turned them into brilliant shows still amazes me. Their creators were totally delusional enough to think that anyone would care to see these works of art -- and yet they were totally right. 

In the end, a successful show, a successful work of art, comes down to execution -- how it's actually made. If a tree house is well-built, it's a thrilling and fun place to go. No one can wait to clamour up it. But if it's badly made, it's creaky and quickly falls to earth and might really hurt someone. Then people avoid it like the plague. And you can never guess how well or badly something is executed until you try to do it.

If you think about it, turning George RR Martin's massive Song of Ice and Fire books into a TV series was a bold, really delusional thing to do -- the books are long, the plots complex and depressing, beloved characters are killed, they're kind of a mess. And yet ... it's one of the greatest shows ever, thanks to the people who created it, who executed it. Or this person, who makes sure that Scorsese's NYC movies get made just the way he wants.   

That's the mystery of art -- how a combination of pie-in-the-sky delusion and real-world hard work can either create something memorable or something that can lead to ruin.