/lit/ - Literature

>>18596093
Art usually follows, in my opinion, a cycle that's pretty easy to detect when you've consumed enough of it--and enough of it not just from your own time, but from a decent sampling of others before it--and you can tell what makes/made certain periods truly revolutionary breakthroughs for artistic thought and ideas and general culture, and what periods were more just long stretches of veneration for the sake of what some might call wholly narcissistic expression.

What makes a good artist, ironically, is a heavy dose of a narcissistic personality--someone who is interested, almost enamoured, with their own personality, thoughts, feelings, and so on, to such an extent that they believe these impulses to hold so much meaning that they channel them, consciously or not, into works of art--mixed with and tempered by a sense and respect of some objective or external reality or principle--natural law, God, other people's thoughts/feelings/emotions, and so on--that they must interface with at many, many points if they wish to not only present their work to people, but also to improve both their work, their craft, and their own abilities of creation and perception.

This is the balance that creates a good artist, if it is navigated properly--an individuated person who is capable of fashioning, maintaining, revising, and growing their own body of beliefs WHILE STILL acknowledging the importance and relevance of both exploring and at times leaving alone, but still respecting the things outside them they may never understand.

And with enough practice, it can be navigated, by almost anyone. No one, in my opinion or understanding, has ever navigated this route perfectly, and even the greatest artists have major failures and shortcomings in both their own professional and personal lives.

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