The Artist: Reaching Out

In terms of it being pursued as a profession, I can say that I am never an artist myself. Yet in our mundane living, I believe that each one of us is an artist in ways as ordinary as it may seem. For example, the passion and creativity for which we derive schemas on how we live our lives are expression of the artist within us.In one way or another, we so desperately want to to express ourselves to others that we go to such extremes just because we wanted to be understood. Yet more often than not, other people can be so naive that they fail to grasp the message.

In part, I agree to how Franz Kafka portrayed the artist in the short story as one who has once enjoyed the attention he gets in demonstrating to others that he can break records in his fasting, and it was only after many years that he realized that "no one would take his trouble seriously"; the artist who eventually became past his prime, no longer at the height of his professional skill because of the change in public interest.

I often see artists like the one a hunger artist symbolizes. They so desperately want to prove and express themselves that it seems to me that they don't stop and ask themselves if they are really sending the right message that they want to give. It is sad to know that after their share of the spotlight, their audience looks forward to the new and fresh artists for whom they avidly want to know if there is something they can give. Now the new artist represents a change of time and interest because as time goes on, the public's interest inevitably change with it also.

The artists, who have now been by-gones retreat themselves to the world, suddenly realizing that anyone who has no feeling for his craft cannot be made to understand it. If I were one of them, I would also have to find a way to console myself with the fact that most people will see craft merely as a form of entertainment and not as something more. This is a a sad fact and it is just as futile if I dwell on it much.

Now the new artists takes their chance to make the people understand them. They hone their talents and improve their skills to manifest what they've got. They adjust to the demands of the public and to the face of time so that like the others who preceded them, they will take that long shot in instilling to the people's minds of the nobility of their cause.

On the other hand, I think that the artists who live to please others cannot find autonomy for himself. I believe that one doesn't need the approval of others to measure his art's worth. In the short story, I find it very frustrating to know that the man wasted his effort for people who doesn't give a damn on what he is doing. An artist, in whatever field he may choose to dwell, must strive for the realization of his own potentialities and pursue excellence, not bearing in mind the people who know nothing of his craft.