How Improbable is Sincerity Really?
Picking back up where we left off with regards to whether sincerity is even possible now, in our last thread Dan nailed the essence of why this remains so unsettled:
Contrary to what Sloterdijk suggests, I'm convinced sincerity is possible in this age of reportedly all-prevailing cynicism. Moreover if sincerity is possible, it would surface first in "art." Why? Because of what art attempts: to reveal truth. If honesty is the root of sincerity, it would stand to reason that an artist who reveals the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (a tall order, admittedly), would by defintion present sincere work. Seems simple enough. But what stops that from happening?
Well I used to believe it was the harshness of the critique. That's why artists left themselves some wiggle room (read: threw in a handful of irony), creating for themselves, as I noted, an escape hatch. The critique's overall jadedness would seek out and squash any weakness (read: sentimentality), and artists' egos prohibited them from opening themselves up to that, so they inserted insurance: "Oh, yes, but I'm doing that with tongue planted firmly in cheek, don't you know." But I don't think that gives artists enough credit. So what is it?
I think a definition would be in order here. What are we talking about really when we look for sincerity in art? It's not just a lack of obvious irony or cynicism. There are plenty of artists offering up what they claim is an honest expression of how they feel: "I honestly feel the world is a charming post-impressionistic cottage in the woods with a warm glow emanating from the open-shuddered windows." (Who's to say that's wrong [besides the starving homeless child in India, I mean]?) Perhaps what we're looking for is a worldview that rings true without being myopic or without squashing hope. Perhaps what we're really talking about here is optimism. We expect sincerity to convey believable optimism. Anything short of that we want to consider cynical.
How do artists then make sincere work when such optimism seems to require willful blinders?
Personally, I'd like to think it's as simple as editing out all the noise and presenting what one concludes is "the truth" (i.e., the human condition includes inherent optimism, so that will take care of itself). Of course, honesty doesn't make sincerity valuable in and of itself: until educated, one could honestly believe the world is flat, for example. And, undoubtedly, the more one is educated (i.e., the more one knows about the world), the harder it becomes to be honest (the essence of Sloterdijk's argument): for example, one could assert an honest view of the war in Iraq but it would have to account for so many contingencies, such as Democracy might actually make the Middle East a better place in 20 years' time, but how many innocent civilians should lose their lives to reach that point, but if you don't force Democracy on those nations, what do you do about the threat of terrorism in the mean while, just bunker down and hope for the best? etc. etc. Any work about Iraq that doesn't account for all those issues (and more) isn't the whole truth, so how could it be sincere?
This New Sincerity is a tricky thing, shedding the skin of hard irony yet retaining a vestigial wink and nod. It finds today earnestness and cleverness, belief and incredulity, pastiche and parody all messily bound up together. Think John Currin. Or, taking a trip back into the already-forgoten cultural memory banks of 2003, think The Darkness.Back when I had more time for independent projects, before we opened the gallery, I was researching that exact process in artmaking, shedding the hard irony, but leaving an escape hatch of sorts (I came up with a few metaphors that seemed to work, but none were air-tight). Today, I'm beginning to think that approach is itself cynical. You can't inch your way back into sincerity. Sincerity's an all or nothing proposition. You either dive into the deep end or you never quite accomplish it.
Contrary to what Sloterdijk suggests, I'm convinced sincerity is possible in this age of reportedly all-prevailing cynicism. Moreover if sincerity is possible, it would surface first in "art." Why? Because of what art attempts: to reveal truth. If honesty is the root of sincerity, it would stand to reason that an artist who reveals the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (a tall order, admittedly), would by defintion present sincere work. Seems simple enough. But what stops that from happening?
Well I used to believe it was the harshness of the critique. That's why artists left themselves some wiggle room (read: threw in a handful of irony), creating for themselves, as I noted, an escape hatch. The critique's overall jadedness would seek out and squash any weakness (read: sentimentality), and artists' egos prohibited them from opening themselves up to that, so they inserted insurance: "Oh, yes, but I'm doing that with tongue planted firmly in cheek, don't you know." But I don't think that gives artists enough credit. So what is it?
I think a definition would be in order here. What are we talking about really when we look for sincerity in art? It's not just a lack of obvious irony or cynicism. There are plenty of artists offering up what they claim is an honest expression of how they feel: "I honestly feel the world is a charming post-impressionistic cottage in the woods with a warm glow emanating from the open-shuddered windows." (Who's to say that's wrong [besides the starving homeless child in India, I mean]?) Perhaps what we're looking for is a worldview that rings true without being myopic or without squashing hope. Perhaps what we're really talking about here is optimism. We expect sincerity to convey believable optimism. Anything short of that we want to consider cynical.
How do artists then make sincere work when such optimism seems to require willful blinders?
Personally, I'd like to think it's as simple as editing out all the noise and presenting what one concludes is "the truth" (i.e., the human condition includes inherent optimism, so that will take care of itself). Of course, honesty doesn't make sincerity valuable in and of itself: until educated, one could honestly believe the world is flat, for example. And, undoubtedly, the more one is educated (i.e., the more one knows about the world), the harder it becomes to be honest (the essence of Sloterdijk's argument): for example, one could assert an honest view of the war in Iraq but it would have to account for so many contingencies, such as Democracy might actually make the Middle East a better place in 20 years' time, but how many innocent civilians should lose their lives to reach that point, but if you don't force Democracy on those nations, what do you do about the threat of terrorism in the mean while, just bunker down and hope for the best? etc. etc. Any work about Iraq that doesn't account for all those issues (and more) isn't the whole truth, so how could it be sincere?
Shakespeare suggests one simple guiding principle here:
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Hamlet, Act I, Scene III, line 78.
This would suggest that rather than throwing in a handful of irony as protection against the critique, an artist must expose him/herself fully to be sincere. An artist must be true to his/herself first and foremost, and then their audience would not see any falseness. In other words, it requires courage. Perhaps we lack sincerity because we lack courage. No one is willing to risk a devastating critique, so they build an escape hatch into their work.
OK, so really, I'm not smoking crack. I offer these thoughts for consideration only, not as manefesto.
posted by Edward_ at
9:44 AM
31 Comments:
Sincerity and authenticity are such tricky words, in wanting to embrace them, it seems an artist is an easy target for criticism and maybe ridicule? It all depends on the context in which you are seeing the so-called sincere art. And what feels sincere in the studio, as a solitary creative act, does not always come across as sincere to the viewer. You bring up a lot here, I have to process it more fully but I like this subject very much. What about a sincerity that doesn't have an ironic wink embedded in it, but an acknowledgement of the failure of any system of communication (be it artmaking or language) to fully communicate everything - words inherently will always fail to fully describe pictures, and pictures will always fail to fully communicate the artists' ideas. That doesn't have to be a sneaky knowing wink, or an escape hatch. But what comes across is still meaningful, if tainted by self-consciousness, and has the capacity to seem authentic or sincere...
I know, I need hard examples. I am not a linear thinker Ed but very much wanted to throw my two cents in. Much to think about here...I am a rambler. I must go ramble on now.
I don't fully agree that sincerity needs to be tied with optimism (or sentimentality).
Sincerity seems to me more a case of the artwork not having contradictory messages (e.g., isn't this a cute cottage... but isn't it actually awful?). I think sincerity also entails the artist really embracing the art of representative of her/him.
I don't fully agree that sincerity needs to be tied with optimism.
Is it possible to be sincerely cynical? I think it is.
This is a tricky topic. I am suspicious of artists who make claims of 'sincerity.' I don't really understand what this means. is it just leaving out the 'knowing wink'? is that it? I think maybe it is beside the point. An aspiration to 'honesty -truth' i can understand.
this is tough to parse - great post ed.
Is it possible to be sincerely cynical? I think it is.
I'm sure it is. In fact to be "sincerely cynical" is a very good description of our prevailing zeitgeist.
Sincerity seems to me more a case of the artwork not having contradictory messages
That's a good guideline for determining what's sincere, yes. And it allows for very complicated work, as well.
And what feels sincere in the studio, as a solitary creative act, does not always come across as sincere to the viewer.
This is perhaps the single most tricky part of this issue. Viewer's don't need any cues to tell them to look for irony or cynicism anymore, so not only can't an artist avoid being read that way by eliminating irony's signifiers, an artist must combat the viewers cynicism in tow, to boot.
I think sincerity is entirely possible - it's our own access to it that is inhibited. We don't allow ourselves to be self-consious in the studio. We've learned it away. We squelch honesty when it feels too dorky, too immature, too academic; or we amp it up to force effect. I think this distrust should be worked in somehow - translated, even accepted - as part of our current cultural climate and the reception of works of art in the marketplace, in the studio, and in the world. Then, rather than aligning sincerity with optimism (the definition of optimism is cloudy anyway), we can align it with vulnerability, which can be fully cynical, beautiful, dorky, ordinary, popular, etc. without ever being artificial or deceitful.
Sincerity and authenticity are such tricky words, in wanting to embrace them, it seems an artist is an easy target for criticism and maybe ridicule?
Yes...can't believe that didn't smack me in the forehead the first time I read it. That is the essence of the problem here: Being a target of ridicule.
Like I'm clearly ridiculing Kincaid, some might say, but still, there it is...the motivation to wink, wink, nudge, nudge in artwork.
How do you get around that?
Then, rather than aligning sincerity with optimism (the definition of optimism is cloudy anyway), we can align it with vulnerability, which can be fully cynical, beautiful, dorky, ordinary, popular, etc. without ever being artificial or deceitful.
That would seem to point back to the "Resistance is Futile" phenomenon as well. The idea that no matter how dorky Star Wars, for example, seems to some folks, it may indeed be possible to use it as subject matter without being artificial or decietful. Yes.
No, no - not resistance... acceptance.
Acceptance is Futile?
I'm confused.
There is an essay that my betrothed wrote called "Hi My Name is Artwork" for a resistance panel in 2000. I would like to email it to you Ed, it's not on the internet, but it's a really great piece and may address some of these issues. Can I email it to you?
got it MM...will print it out and read on the way home...your betrothed remains one of my favorite art writers, so I look forward to it.
Sorry, that was confusing. What I was trying to articulate is that I think being sincere is a matter of accepting whatever it is that is really, personally meaningful, synthesizing it, and putting it out in the world without sugar coating it.
Sincerity comes about when people accept that sometimes humanity needs teddy bears, and there's nothing wrong with some "comfort food" now and again.
But the funniest thing is that the Shakespeare quote cited above is totally insincere. The scene is, a young man is trying to leave to travel, and his dad starts running off at the mouth with "advice." Here's the speech in contemporary English. Sorry to take up so much room, but I think you'll get a kick out of it, and judge for yourself exactly how sincere it is.
Get going, you're embarrassing me already. The wind is at your back and you're sitting around. Good luck to you.
But remember a few things: Keep your back straight. Don't say whatever's on your mind, and don't act without thinking.
Be friendly with people, but don't get vulgar. Take your best friends, the ones you've been through thick and thin with, and keep them close to you like you're clamped together in a vice, and don't go out drinking with just anyone off the street. Don't get yourself into any fights, but if you find yourself in one, make sure you scare some sense into the other guy.
Pay attention to what other people have to say, but keep quiet yourself. Don't get upset if people insult you, but if you have nothing good to say, don't say anything.
Buy the best clothes you can afford, but don't get clothes that are too expensive. And get the good stuff, not that gaudy stuff. The clothes make the man, and the high-class people in France will respect and welcome you.
Don't borrow any money, and don't lend any either, because you'll lose both your money and your friendship, and you'll lose your self-respect.
And no matter what, always be true to yourself, because just as sure as night follows day, then you'll always be honest to others too.
Goodbye! Good luck!
I don't know about anyone else, but I think that's pretty tedious. I wouldn't say Shakespeare's sincerity factor on this speech is very high.
I'm not quite following you Henry (although I enjoyed the "translation").
I wouldn't say Shakespeare's sincerity factor on this speech is very high.
Compared with what other Shakespeare passage, though? Was he ever sincere in the terms you seem to be describing?
Polonius liked to hear himself speak, and this is not even the longest speech of his in that scene. Whether he was sincere in offering the advice to Laertes or not is somewhat indpendent of whether it describes the path to sincerity or not, no?
I think a part of the problem is critics who are afraid of not conforming either. Just as artists fear the bad critique, so too the critics fear the "He doesn't get it" moment, methinks.
So, insincerity on the part of an artist is, perhaps, seen as sincerity by a few, or one, and then everyone else follows. Ugh.
First I would like to mention that my word verification sequence was "umsexo". And second, Crionna, I don't understand what your line of thinking is. What is the ugh about?
Edward! You hit the nail right on the head for me. I completely agree that sincerity is possible today. But I believe that it arrives with simplicity. I don't believe you can have sincerity as the result of the same intense intellectual machinations that surround many kinds of art of the past four decades. I read people here trying to think it through. Listen to your gut, I say, and drop the mind game.
Sincerity in art can begin with the materials. I picked up materials and started putting them together, guided not by any doctrines or ideas of Art, but simply by the materiality of the paint, the weight of the brush, the feel of gesture. I tried to connect with the sheer enjoyment of moving paint that dates from age 2. Think of the sincere enjoyment Coltrane had to have, laying out sax solos that seemed almost dappled with the sunlight shining through the fire escape. Sincerity comes out of you when you do what you love.
That's a damnably valuable thing, very rare. I think the glimpse of it is what turned people on to Outsider art during the past decade. I love my Sudduth painting partly because it's unsullied by -isms, reifications and all that other critical weight.
I don't think McKnight 'Painter of Light' is being sincere, incidentally; I believe he's pushing an easy button that makes the God people fork over cash. As cynical as it gets.
Bill Gusky, there is nothing wrong with trying to "think it through." That doesn't exclude sincerity on the part of the artist.
Pete, the "ugh" is for critics who would conform their opinion in order to not be ridiculed.
We are asking for sincerity from artists in the face of possible ridicule of critics who themselves may not be sincere in their critique. Artists and their dealers are supposed to be champions of the work, the critic is trusted with a higher purpose, no? Therefore the Ugh for those who belie that purpose to conform.
As I see it though, this is simply the nature of the art world. In a world where it is important to get the works of one's artists into the right collections, no matter what the collector actually thinks of them, it appears to an outsider that for many, the whole game is just that, with the score kept in status and money.
Then again, we all face the same choice as artists everyday, risk riduicule and poverty doing what you like best, or conform in some way(s) to make life a bit easier.
My difficulty is in trying to determine (or caring for that matter) if the artist is sincere in their work. I can live with art that I enjoy that is insincere because I enjoy the work, whereas it is the artist who has "sold out". Thank goodness most art I like (or maybe can afford) is made by those who have chosen not to cater to my whims, but to their own.
Ok I understand where you are coming from, but isnt' it nice to think about the concepts that hover around the artmaking process, without necessarily invoking the "artworld"?
Pete, good point, let me clarify: thinking is great - I mean, here we are doing it. But strategizing sincerity as an approach to art making is itself insincere. To be a sincere artist, I'd contend that you would need to drop strategies that extend beyond the materials at hand and your gut reaction to them -- this is assuming of course that you're making art with materials. That's all.
> But the funniest thing is that the Shakespeare quote cited above is totally insincere. The scene is, a young man is trying to leave to travel, and his dad starts running off at the mouth with "advice." Here's the speech in contemporary English. Sorry to take up so much room, but I think you'll get a kick out of it, and judge for yourself exactly how sincere it is.
Here's Lionel Trilling's gloss on the lines from his Sincerity and Authenticity (which I linked to in the previous thread and which is otherwise quite germane to this discussion):
We naturally try to understand that concluding sentence of Polonius's speech in a way that will make it consort with our low opinion of the speaker—"If you always make your own interests paramount, if you look out for Number One, you will not mislead your associates to count on your attachment to their interests, and in this way you will avoid incurring their anger when, as is inevitable, you disappoint their expectations." But the sentence will not submit to this reading. Our impulse to make its sense consistent with our general view of Polonius is defeated by the way the lines sound, by their lucid moral lyricism. This persuades us that Polonius has had a moment of self-transcendence, of grace and truth. He has conceived of sincerity as an essential condition of virtue and has discovered how it is to be attained.
The extent to which Hamlet is suffused by the theme of sincerity is part of everyone's understanding of the play... [he goes on to enumerate a few examples]
But of all the elements of the play, so many more than I mention, which lead us to think about sincerity, Polonius's utterance of the famous three lines is the most engaging, perhaps because of its implicit pathos. 'To thine own self be true'—with what a promise the phrase sings in our ears! (...)
Doesn't the fact that we are debating sincerety point towards its absence?
I think that Bill is getting there when he says that sincerity can not be strategized. As an artist either you are sincere in your work or you are not. I would say that each one of knows if we are or not.
Crionna is getting to the point when she says:
"Then again, we all face the same choice as artists everyday, risk riduicule and poverty doing what you like best, or conform in some way(s) to make life a bit easier."
If you want to be an 'art star' then you must conform to the demands of the market. making the work that you love is not the best strategy to get ahead. This does not mean that you can't be sucessful and sincere though. If you are really lucky then the work you love happens to be the work that the art wold loves at the moment as well.
For those of us who do not love what the current trend is we must choose between being calculating and making work that we know will go over or risk obscurity and dissmissal to make what we know we must.
I'm with Robert. Risk obscurity and dismissal! Does anyone do it happily anymore? It's SO hard. With that in mind, we can probably assume that a large part of the truly sincere work is never accepted in the market anyway and, as a result, they don't have a clue what's real and what's not. They're pretty much just wallowing in the insincere stuff and getting insurance appraisals at tax time. It's like concentric circles around the artist and the work - peers, curators, dealers, collectors, critics - each with his or her own agenda. As the circle widens the chance for sincerity is challenged. All the more reason to do what you love.
Speaking cynically. Step back for a moment and consider art-production and the selling of art as identical to any other economic activity.
Creating ironic work could be seen as artists' adaptive response to forces of the marketplace. How? One of the reasons people buy art is to flatter themselves.
An artist who makes nudge-nudge-wink-wink art provides the collector with an opportunity to congratulate himself on his ability to be "in on the joke".
The subtler the joke, the higher the payoff in terms of elitist cache accrued to the consumer (collector, curator, critic, etc).
Making an artwork to resemble something totally uninteresting is the sublest joke of all.
Edward remarked that viewer's don't need any cues to tell them to look for irony or cynicism anymore … an artist must combat the viewers cynicism
Where I see this point of view as problematic is that it assumes a mode of finality in time. The ironical or cynical frame of reference may not be so obvious over time but will be aggregated into a stylistic mannerism for this period. I don't see Kincade's work as sincere, in the anti-ironic sense nor do I think he is being intentionally ironic. In my view, and like Bill said, he is just making a product for a marketplace which he understands. Widgets.
Robert said If you want to be an 'art star' then you must conform to the demands of the market. No, this is a false observation and part of the issue here. There seems to be an excess of sensitivity to criticism and ridicule which I would expect to be the normal condition in the early stages of any advanced art.
So I'm questioning if we are saying sincerity is doing what we love, as Bill suggested, or as a exit strategy from irony and cynicism as an operating frame of reference. The problem with both cynicism and irony is that they address issues obliquely. The approach has become codified and its effectiveness diminished because it is what we are expecting. It creates an intellectual environment where we can be comfortable because we know the code but we are just playing games manipulating the subroutines and avoiding the truth
For a long time, one of my favourite quotes was "sincerity is the new cynicism."
Sincerity comes out of you when you do what you love.
thanks bill. great statement and open ended.
Or is sincere immaterial to the problem of art?
Hopefully one who makes art would never look back at their project and ask the question--is it sincere. Maybe honest, or clear or simple, or complex or overcomplicated, or compromised, overdone or perfect, or needs them gewgaws to get it done, but sincere, no, that's something I'd write on an unemotional slightly detached goodbye card.
But a good read all the same.
My view is that the sincerity/irony debate is an interesting thing to talk about but perhaps a false dialectic. It might be better to think about them on either end of a continuum, with most work having some of each. In the same way, one wouldn't want to view the world in strictly black and white terms. I think the best art has a level of complexity to it, hopefully emotional complexity. Therefore, I think it's possible for a work to be both funny and sad, deadpan and vulnerable, sincere and ironic, optimistic and depressive, all at the same time. To me, this is more reflective of life as it's lived. BTW, for more on Kincaid, see Susan Orlean's excellent piece in The New Yorker a few years back.
Rick, you make an excellent point that I must agree with. Even so, the cynical/ironic has, as I see it, dominated for so long, that I rally behind the sincere, hoping predominantly sincere work can get some daylight for a while. I also see strongly sincere work as a place where contributions can still be distinguished in a very crowded, highly cynical field. So many of the art games have become so overplayed that having no game at all, at least through intention, seems like a good idea for a while.
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