Soren Kierkegaard wrote a number of good books, one of them being Fear and Trembling, in which he discusses the story of Abraham and Isaac from the book of Genesis. The essence of the story is that Abraham is commanded by God to kill/sacrifice his son Isaac atop a mountain. The title refers to the anxiety Kierkegaard identifies with Abraham’s decision to sacrifice his son and whether it is the right course of action as it contradicts human ethics. Abraham’s decision to sacrifice Isaac can either be viewed as faithfully following God’s commands, or simply murdering his son.
I have noticed that the Artist experiences a similar fear and trembling in his journey towards artistic ‘success’ (which is difficult to define). The road on which the Artist travels is paved with anxiety, like Abraham feels when he journeys to the mountain to make the sacrifice. How are these anxieties similar? The Artist isn’t killing anyone, right?
Loneliness
Abraham’s problem is that nobody can understand his decision. He is alone in his choice and can gain no external validation of the righteousness of his choice except through faith in God. The Artist faces a similar lack of understanding in his decision to pursue art
The Artist is a lonely and sensitive creature – events that a regular man would be unfazed by impact him significantly (Stoics do not make good artists, except Seneca). The Artist’s anguish lasts much longer, for it transforms itself into his art. He dwells on his suffering, while a regular man suffers, accepts it, then gets on with life. Many artists are motivated by alienation and loneliness – Kierkegaard himself famously rejected his fiancé because of his innate melancholy and belief he would not live much longer due to poor health.
Art is a social instrument. The Artist uses it to resolve his loneliness and anguish through artistic expression. He craves recognition of his artistic talent because it represents a way for him to gain social acceptance in his society. Thus, the level of recognition is a way in which the artistic judges his success to reduce his artistic anxiety.
Recognition Anxiety
It’s clear art is intrinsically created for the purpose for being shared. An ancient cave painting on the wall was not simply painted for the silent universe to gaze upon; it was painted to represent to others the image of something. A story cannot be a story without an audience, even if that audience is just one person, the teller himself.
The poet Emily Dickinson was hardly known while she lived, but has achieved immense post-humous recognition. Many artists continually strive at their craft in the hope that one day a wave of recognition will come and will redeem all the suffering they endured in pursuit of artistic success.
But what if that day never comes?
This is recognition anxiety.
If Abraham is either a murderer or a man of faith, the Artist is either a deluded narcissist or a talented creative mind. The central anxiety is the apparent inability to distinguish between these two judgements. Recognition is used as a distinguishing method, but it is an imperfect one, which means the anxiety can never be fully resolved. It is always there, lingering in the frenzied corners of the Artist’s mind.
The Teological Suspension of the Ethical
Kierkegaard brings this concept into his work in relation to Abraham. Is there some higher force that requires a suspension of usual moral standards? For Abraham, the answer is yes.
For the Artist, who will depict acts and thoughts that contravene the social mores of his time, he also must face the same anxiety. Can I describe such immoralities in my work? What will be the retribution from others? Is art something that speaks to a higher faith, a sublime irrationality in human beings that as such it requires a suspension of moral standards?
In Genesis, Abraham rejects the morality that he must love his son in favour of faith, suspending the ethical standards in favour of obeying God. Similarly, the Artist, to become himself, must reject morality in favour of not religious faith but artistic faith. The journey towards artistic faith is extraordinarily difficult but necessary, as the Artist must believe in his own abilities to an excessive extent to produce anything worthwhile.
Art provides a recognition of the subjectivity of all things, attacking the idea of absolute truth. For art itself is a journey into the fictitious, a journey spurred by both rationality and irrationality into myth and representation. Religion itself is merely a form of art, providing a necessary ship for people to board to navigate the stormy ocean of existence, if you will excuse me to indulge myself in a metaphor!
Faith
The Artist, instead of placing his faith in God like Kierkegaard, has faith in himself. There is no guarantee of success, and he instinctively knows that talent and skill in art is not inherent in him by nature but developed over time through practice. He rides the power of his ego, caressing it and also sometimes whipping it, on his journey towards artistic salvation. This destination, he imagines, will redeem everything he has ever done in service of his art, and his sacrifice will ultimately be rewarded. This is his leap of faith as an artist, whereby he moves from the ethical to the artistic.
Conclusion
To recap, the central anxiety for the Artist is this:
Is he and his art truly worthwhile, or is he just a delusional, immoral, egomaniacal idiot?
That there seems to be no objective answer to this, only subjective ones, is in fact the cause of the tension expressed in this question.
