Michael Mitchell: Archive

For serious artists, the desire to create is more than a fun way to spend one's time. It's more than an exciting or challenging day job. Sure, some artists are content to be working with their favorite medium, regardless of the subject they are recreating, but for the most serious there is a deeper motivation.

The difference between a serious artist and all others is the need to create something original. It is the idea that matters the most to such a mind and nothing less than the full realization of that idea will satisfy that need.

Unfortunately, this need can be so strong that it leads to hastiness, as artists sometimes jump in and start working on the final product before they have properly conceptualized the end result and planned the creative process of achieving it.

Another problem is art is a craft that seemingly has no rules, leading some artists to think they're infallible and that conceptualization is unnecessary. Unlike construction or engineering, where failure is obvious when the building crumbles or the plane crashes, there are no physical consequences if a work of art is poorly produced (unless you count how others react to it, and I don't). It's even possible to wake up from a dream, get an idea and have a decent painting, sculpture, song or short story finished by lunch time. This work could even go on to be the most beloved and respected artwork in history -- but is it really any good? Would it stand if it were a building? If it were a plane, would it fly?

Most people, including other serious artists and "experts," would tell you there is no answer to such questions because art is non-utilitarian and so the concept of efficacy simply doesn't apply to it. I think such people are cowards. There are methods for judging the merit of an artwork and everyone knows it, whether they know what those methods are or not. However, I'm talking about something much deeper here than the integration of one's theme or color harmony or the economy of composition. These are important, of course, but the real question is: How does an artist know if he's achieved his goal?

Right now, any artist reading this is thinking of the first time he let others see his work, or the first time he sent his work off to a publisher or turned it in to a teacher or editor, or the first time he read a critique of his work in a newspaper or magazine. There are tons of horror stories and rationalizations for getting over rejection, just as there are tons of happy endings and humble acceptance speeches. However, none of it is relevant to the issue of an artwork's efficacy. There is no amount of rejection letters or fan mail or good reviews or prestigious awards that will tell an artist if he achieved his goal.

So how can you tell? It's easy. Like with most controversial issues, one's perspective becomes clear when all preconceived notions are disregarded. If you can do that, if you can ignore anything anyone has ever told you on the subject, you'll see it is not mysterious or mystical, it's obvious. You can't know if a goal has been achieved if you don't know what that goal is. And while it is true that a work of art is an end in itself, that doesn't mean an artist had no goal in creating it. For a serious artist, the work of art is the goal.

The goal isn't to make girls fall in love with you or to please your boss or client. If you're the kind of artist who creates what others want you to or the kind who sells his work and lets others change it, then either you're not an artist who is serious about his work or you'll never be satisfied creatively. The goal isn't to get rich and famous, either. If it is, then your work is merely a stepping stone to something else or you're a sellout who'll hate the sight of his work and avoid his reflection for the rest of his life. Some artists are just content to be working and doing something they enjoy. Some artists just use their work as a means to an end. But for a serious artist, the work of art is the end.

This is why it is important for an artist to conceptualize a work before he starts creating it. He needs to comprehend in fully conscious terms what it is he is creating.

Sure, conceptualization is usually thought of as simply another stage in the creative process, a boring stage that we do because we have to, because we're just following the rules we were taught. We think of conceptualization as some kind of duty to the work itself that we suffer through when all we really want to do is start creating. The truth is conceptualization is much more important than plotting and planning the process of creating a work. Though this is part of it, the primary purpose of conceptualization is to imagine the work.

If you're not a serious artist, if you're just creating as a hobby or if you're the kind of artist who is part of a team or a production company, then it probably seems like I'm exaggerating. You see a landscape you like and you recreate it. Your boss tells you what to create and you do it. The conceptualization stage has already been completed in these cases.

However, if you are a serious artist, then it is your biggest responsibility to fully conceptualize the work, otherwise you will have no idea how to create it. And even if you just start on it anyway in the hopes you'll figure it out as you go, you'll never know for sure if you were successful. Your works will never feel complete and your judgment of yourself as an artist will never be final. You'll have to live with a constant inner struggle to express yourself without knowing what it is you want to express. This is that torture we always hear artists whining about.

That's why conceptualization is so important. The goal of any artist is to create (in whatever form) the idea he originally conceived. So the only way to determine success or failure is to compare that idea to the final work. If you don't take the time to conceive the work, then you'll have nothing to compare it to and you'll always feel lost and frustrated as an artist. It's obvious, isn't it? An artist is creating something original, something that doesn't exist in reality, something that must be imagined because it can't be copied. If you don't take as much time as is needed to fully imagine whatever it is you're creating, then you'll never know if you actually created it.

This perceived lack of a clear goal is why nearly everyone thinks of serious art as merely an expression of powerful emotions we don't understand or that it's the result of some kind of magic that occurs when "gifted" artists put a paintbrush to a canvas. It is believed that an artist can just create whatever he wants and some artists are just luckier and better at wanting than others. This is all nonsense. An artist, by imagining an original work, may be creating something that doesn't exist in reality, something he can't just copy from a photograph, but that doesn't mean he has no standards to go by. If he properly conceptualizes his work, then the original concept is the standard.

There may be no physical consequences of poorly creating a work of art, since it won't crash or crumble no matter how bad the artist is, but there are consequences -- excruciating, tortuous, frustrating, relentless psychological consequences.

If the final work doesn't reflect the original concept, then the artist didn't achieve his goal. He didn't create what he wanted to create. What could be worse than that?