Artists & Normals - A Class Struggle
Introduction
The arts are often associated with higher society, not the working class. Art is a hobby at most for the working man, something to spend the little free time he has. The patronage required to spend enough time to become a professional is reserved for the wealthy, and throughout history, the cost of education has made it only accessible to the upper ends of society. We often associate art with the famous and celebrated; we think of glamour and decadence, a life lived in extravagance, filled with novel-esque escapades of debauchery and escapism. We think of the auctions where a painting is sold for millions, and most of the wonders of the world are built on the backs of the lower classes and fueled by the deep pockets of the wealthy. They say we all end up at the same destination in the end, but some are buried in pyramids while the rest are thrown in nameless mass graves.
While history has evened out the gaps between the social and economic classes, there is still a difference between them, and the revenant of the past still haunts our society. Art is still largely associated with the upper class and wealth. Whether it’s modern art and its money laundering schemes, or curators flashing their PhDs in art history while sipping champagne, or the glamorous lives of movie and rock stars flying private jets. Art is, by and large, still associated with wealth, even if there’s a cultural paradox.
The cultural trope of the starving artist and working-class parents still fearing that their child will be delusional enough to pursue a career in the arts, paired with the glamorous shades of Hollywood, makes the arts a peculiar paradox. Something unachievable for the common man, and some kind of richness reserved only for the extraordinary, for the most noble and royal of humanity. This paradox is at times purposefully caused by the ruling class. In the pursuit of being relatable, you have cultural and artistic industrial plants, the most well-known and wealthiest of any artist in the world tend to be from the upper classes and not only have money but also connections within all the cultural industries. Taylor Swift has crafted a careful persona of a humble girl from a quaint and rural background, but her parents, both with backgrounds in finance and marketing, set her up for success from the beginning. There are many more examples of seemingly self-made common people who make it big by simply pursuing their passion for art, but the truth is that most of them never were and never will be working class.
Today, we’re exploring this class struggle and taking a look throughout history and today to see how language and society differentiate between artists and “normals”. Self-taught artists or people who haven’t had the social or economic background to properly pursue and study art are put in a different camp from artists. These normals are not labelled as artists first hand, but only in second hand because of their relentless pursuit of beauty and their dedication to their craft. If somebody tells you they are a painter, do you think that they make paintings or paint walls in buildings? It probably depends on how they look and largely on what class they belong to. Both work with paint, but in two completely different worlds. To avoid association with the working class, the painter calls himself an artist.
Class Belonging and Titles
While work titles may seem superfluous and a creative hobby for the LinkedIn-obsessed - titles are labels and intricately linked with our self-image and also with how the world at large views us. These labels and titles are and have been a constant in segregation, and to this day, still separate people from people. It’s inherent to any class system that titles are used to divide and separate people into different groups. Consider feudalism, where regardless of your profession, you are titled as a noble or a commoner. Work titles are used within organisations to signal hierarchies and to display what position of power any person holds.
It’s radical to suggest humanity should shed all labels, as this would not only confuse our linguistics but entirely mess up our line of communication; we naturally use labels and grouping to distinguish between things, and a title isn’t much different from names. After all, when surnames became necessary to differentiate between and keep track of people, most people in central Europe were called by their profession, like Smith, Fisher, Miller, etc. However, to distinguish themselves from the plebeians, the upper classes rarely took occupational surnames and instead were named after the land they owned. They were at liberty to invent their own names, their history and would often spin poetic tales, making up a mythical and legendary history behind the family name. While today the working class is more in control of their name and identity than before, labelling is often outside of one’s own control.
The label of ‘artist’ can’t be claimed by just anyone; it has to be earned or inherited by blood. In some rare cases, the talent of an individual can be so exceptional that it seems like a divine gift. We can accept these metaphysics because they maintain the idea that the label of artist is still reserved for a select few, and that it takes some extraordinary quality. Just as the priesthood was reserved for a select few who could communicate with the divine, so only a select few are good enough to make art. This gatekeeping is ancient and still well alive today. Just going back a little more than a hundred years, we can look at the French artist Augustin Lesage, who was self-taught and before painting worked as a coal miner in France, as his father and grandfather did before him.
Despite having a successful artistic career, Lesage’s Wikipedia page still first and foremost labels him as a coal miner and an artist second. Augustin Lesage was self-taught and never had any official training in the visual arts, and began painting at the age of 35 when he heard a voice speak to him in the mines telling him, “one day you’ll be a painter”. According to Lesage himself, more voices would speak to him and would dictate to him how to and what to paint. This alleged communication with what Lesage believed to be the spiritual world helped Lesage make a name for himself, and he began to see some recognition in the cultural world of France at the beginning of the 20th century. People were impressed that a working-class man could create such elaborate and beautiful paintings, and people found his own explanation perfectly believable. It seemed the only way a regular person could have such talent was through some divine gift. Charles Richet, who received a Nobel Prize in medicine in 1913, echoed this sentiment when he said:
“It is astounding that an uneducated man, with no family members in the arts, a simple coal miner, would reach this form of art.”
The culturally advanced bourgeois found it more believable that ghosts had to be the source of artistic talent in the common man than pure dedication and natural talent. Surely the supernatural had to be involved; after all, the aristocrats were all divinely gifted, and these ideas of superiority still live on today. Metaphysics has been replaced by ideas of biological supremacy, and intellectual excellence is still reserved for the upper ends of society’s structure. While Lesage might have managed to nestle himself amongst the fine diners and aristocrats at the time, they wanted to make sure that the rest of the masses knew their place, and they would do so through labels and titles. Lesage remained, even past his death, a coal miner first, despite producing over 800 paintings. Lesage wasn’t the only working-class man to dedicate most of his life to art and still be referred to by his lower-class occupational title.
Ferdinand Cheval, born around the same time as Augustin Lesage, spent 33 years building and sculpting “Le Palais idéal” (the "Ideal Palace"), a large-scale piece of art which is 26 metres long, 14 metres wide and 10 metres tall. It’s filled with waterfalls, a pond, gallery walkways, a roof terrace, and so much more. It’s intricate and impressively detailed. Cheval never left France but worked as a mailman and would see the world through magazines and postcards. Inspired by architecture worldwide, the Ideal Palace features a mosque, a Swiss chalet, an Algerian house and a Hindu temple. The Idea Palace still stands and is a popular tourist destination, and it’s impressive not because an artist spent 33 years on it but because a post-carrier did.
When talking about Cheval or his magnum opus, his talent and artistic prowess are only second to his occupation. Just like Lesage, Ferdinand Cheval wasn’t an artist. First and foremost, he was a mail-carrier, a postman, a working-class man whose work would eventually be declared a cultural landmark of France and be officially protected some 40 years after his death. In his life, unfortunately, the fine society deemed his work boorish, amateurish and unworthy of praise. It wasn’t until the Minister of Culture declared it a landmark that the ruling class would change their tune. Today, this fascinating piece of work is celebrated as one of the most interesting landmarks of France. While these two working-class Frenchmen may have broken the boundaries between the upper and lower classes, they will remain labelled as workers first and artists second. They are not judged on their artistic merit alone, but by their class belonging as well. This divide still exists, and to not be lumped together with the common man, the finer folks in the art world have made sure to set themselves apart from the rest of the world through labels and styles of art.
Labels and Styles of Art
Lesage and Cheval are both considered now to be naïve or art brut (outsider art), two styles of art that are associated with untrained and untutored artists. Long before these labels, art made by the common man was referred to as “folk art” or even “peasant art”, an umbrella term that was attributed to any kind of work made by lower-class citizens, and is still largely used today to refer to work by “non-professionals”. However, at the end of the 19th century, interest in this kind of art became more rampant as the aristocrats of the time took notice of the talents of common people. Psychiatrists, historians and other educated people began to express interest in the art of so-called outsiders. This included children, the mentally ill and the working class.
With this also came the recognition that normal people could have immense artistic talent, and that their drive, skill and ambition were no different from that of the higher class. As a line of defence, and a way to keep the normals out from their marble pedestals, they coined terms like art brut (“raw art”) and naïve art. The bourgeois perceived in the work of these groups an expressive power born out of a seeming lack of sophistication. The term “art brut” means “raw art” and refers to the art not having been through the academic ‘cooking’ process. As if made by cavemen who haven’t figured out fire yet and are unable to cook their meals.
These labels on styles of art are varied and many, and all serve to gatekeep and separate the class of artists. Today, some wear these labels as badges of honour, and others fight against them. It’s important to know their history and their meanings, however, and who coined these terms. Naivë art is exactly what it sounds like and is another term commonly applied to self-taught or untrained artists. The difference between naïve art and art brut, however, is that the naïve artist seemingly aspires to “normal” artistic status. That is to say, they have a more conscious interaction with the established art world than outsider artists. It’s also sometimes referred to as primitivism. As if art made by animals and not sophisticated human beings.
Their art neighbours the form of fine art, but because of their social and economic status, and perhaps even their intellectual or mental talent, they somehow miss the mark of refined and proper art. Their art isn’t raw, but undercooked, and they are somehow naive to believe that they could reach the heights which are reserved for the ruling class and the finest of gentlemen. Again, these labels serve as a prime function of distinguishing between different styles and works of art. But it’s curious how so much art performed by lower-class people gets lumped into these umbrella terms, despite whatever style they may be in.
For the upper ends of society, down to the choice of colour comes a free labelling and a distinction covering extensive depth of character, theme and technique. Ranging from minimalist, expressionistic, idealistic, romantic, nihilistic, classical, decadent, and all other adjectives in the dictionary, the established art world is free to label and assign itself whatever label it sees fit, and anyone outside of it is lumped together with the rest of the exterior. As previously stated, labels are fundamental to communication, and they’re natural, but so is art, and this is important to remember.
Final Words - The Nature of Art
It's a shame that singing, dancing, and painting are not viewed as activities innate to all people but as competitions of worth and hierarchy. We don't view artistic pursuits like the natural activity of birds singing, bees making hives or spiders weaving intricate webs. We view them not as baseline activities to our species but instead as skills, and the point of them is to get good at them and be better than others, rather than being a unique expression of the individual. We often view art as something extraordinary and not as something natural. To stand out, we believe you need not only dedication and hard work, but also a natural talent or a divine gift with you.
Art then becomes something reserved only for a select few, and not something that anyone can dive into, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. Art is for everyone; anyone at any time can create art, and everyone can create good art. The metric isn’t conceptualism, pseudo-intellectualism or any other kind of -ism. Good art is aligned with life, and its purpose depends on the artist.
Art can be a message, it can be therapeutic, it can be self-discovery or just something which brings joy, a funny pastime activity. Whether the goal is amusement, philosophical, spiritual or anything else, art can achieve that, and if it achieves what it set out to do, it’s good art. Good art isn’t photorealistic, and it’s not minimalist unless that’s what it wants to be. Good art is made with good intentions, with heart and soul, and it can be done by anyone; it’s not an activity for just aristocrats and the wealthy. It’s been a part of our history for as long as we have existed and will continue to be so.
You are free to create just as a bird is free to sing, and if you feel the need to make art - go ahead and do it. Don’t let anything stop you. It’s part of you as a human, and nothing and no one can take that away from you. It’s your right and the legacy of your spirit. Art transcends borders, it transcends languages, and it transcends class. Art is by its very nature is transcendental.
