Being an Artist. Yes, that is an issue! Part 1.

Friday, I was on a bus back from my clinic and I must have thought of something  vainglorious, because I immediately stopped myself and remembered something Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote  many years ago and which I read in the 1950s. He started out this [nameless] book by making a comparison between the Indian philosopher Sankara, and the German mystic, Meister Eckhart. I think the quote was identical, or nearly so in both men's work: "An artist is not a special man, every man is a special kind of artist."  Some artists, certainly those of my generation, both men and women, had some idea that we were special because we chose to be artists and because we worked at it whether we were supported by the art world or not. We then had, as a group, the sort of status cooks, computer millionaires, popular musicians among several categories, now have. Artists, that is "fine artists," no longer have that status outside of the reputation game, which nowadays depends on sales, almost only. Then too, the artists who fit into that camp, in reputation have, at the same time a questionable reputation with the general public. They do, as far as the general public is concerned, bizarre things, peculiar things and ugly ones. So, the reputation we garnered around the time of AE (Abstract Expressionism), as a group, is gone. One of my models, a few years ago, one of my favorites of all time as a model, a person and a straight talker, once told me why she didn't go into the "Fine Arts". She was an art school graduate, but she majored in clothing design. Once she was out she decided to make hand crafted shoes, only. because, they were very hard to make well. They had to fit and they had to last, and also they had to look good. This is, of course unlike most other clothes. As long as they cover those proscribed parts of the body, almost anything goes. There are very few craftsmanlike necessities. If some part doesn't fit, so what, it might be a new style. Anyhow she said that she couldn't see what was the use of all the fine art which people did. She felt it was something like the design of clothing which did not have to fit, and completely alien to what she did, making shoes. I think she was a very right thinking person. The first things which artists have to decide for themselves is, what is the purpose of what they are doing. We cannot merely enter the water of the art pond and swim around in it without knowing where we are and what we are doing. It is our own responsibility to decide just what we as artists are and what we are doing. We also ought to know why we are doing it. It is not enough that we make art because we love to do it and that joy at working in the studio overwhelms almost any negative thoughts we might have. For example I know that for most of my life, whenever I didn't paint, I was murder to get along with. Well, so on a personal level it was better for my family if I went into my studio regularly and painted almost every day. But, Let me leave you with this [in part I of this piece] if a shoemaker has a tough job making shoes, what is the tough job that an artist has and a clothing designer doesn't have? What apparently necessary qualities of especially women's clothing design are there which are not required in good art?