The Life or Slow Death of American Artists
by Nancy Van Ness
– USA –
As director of a performing ensemble, one of the joys of my life is to support other artists and witness their work. There is nothing more satisfying than watching my young colleague Lena Gilbert unravel the knots of a creative problem.
During a photo shoot in the studio one day, our oldest performer, Ann Folke Wells and and our youngest, Lena, sat together at a table talking. Ann was sharing with Lena the wisdom that comes only from decades of making art – interaction that in itself is educational. I also take pleasure in learning from Ann. I especially love to watch her explore her many strengths; the essence of her success is that she continues to create for her own joy and that of all who witness it.
In sharp contrast, it breaks my heart to see talented people who could be artists fail to do their work because they aren’t confident enough of their own ability to create. Perhaps they have been taught to be too self-critical, as can happen, especially in academic circles. An emphasis on critical thinking can kill the drive to create freely. Sometimes I think the prevalence of university degrees in the arts hinders rather than helps in this matter! (However, I certainly don’t discount that aspiring artists without degrees also suffer inhibitions that hold them back.)
I was spared the burden of a college degree in dance. The only dance degree I knew of when I went off to college in 1963 was one offered at a small women’s school in the Midwest that I would never have deigned attend. My college degree is actually in French literature; my dance training was in the PE department. I studied French literature, classical and modern French theater; I received a splendid and broad education that has served me well. I went off to my first job teaching dance at a Southern girls’ school where I began creating the system of dance and musical accompaniment that I consider my greatest achievement. At that crucial moment in my life, I somehow knew that a dancer danced. It’s a lesson that’s been reinforced in my life over and over. However, it was my great good fortune to come to that conclusion early.
Motherhood derailed my career for a time; I simply was not able to create serious art and be a mother simultaneously. After my child left home, I took a full time place in a dance company as soon as I could. I am grateful to the people in my life who helped me overcome the voices in my head that said I was too old. One of my advisors at the time told me that if dancing was my mission, then I had to do it. For a number of years I could not say I was a dancer, because I didn’t dance. I was also not a fully alive human being. My health suffered. I feel fortunate to have survived that time and to have moved on from it. I understand what agony it is to not live my life as an artist.
Some young people with degrees in the arts have not learned that artists make art. That truth does not seem to have been part of the curriculum. This pedagogical failure may derive in part from the fact that academics have to evaluate students and give them grades. The system can be discouraging rather than encouraging, regardless of how well the student did working under it. The notion that there are somehow “good” and “bad” artists is implanted in their minds. “Good” artists, they learn, deserve to be recognized; those who aren’t recognized are simply not “good”.
This kind of thinking is deadly. Julia Cameron, whose book “The Artist’s Way” is a remarkable source of practical help for artists, says our job is to do the work, not judge it, nor ourselves. Cameron understands that artists make art.
I know talented artists whose college classmates have achieved “successful,” highly visible careers right out of school, while they can’t seem to get a gig. Since they have learned to judge themselves ruthlessly, they begin to call themselves failures.
Some of these talented artists even turn down work. I wonder if they do so because it’s not the kind of work they had anticipated, or because they think that only the “big time” is acceptable. After all, so much effort and money have been invested in their careers. Whatever the reason, years go by and some undeniably talented artists don’t work; all their conversation about making art is referenced to an ever more remote college past. As the dream recedes further and further, some of them fall into depression and despair.
The burden of debt also greatly complicates the plight of many young artists today. They begin their working lives with enormous college debt, as do their peers in other fields. Unfortunately, a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or marketing specialist is more likely to be able to pay off that debt than most artists are.
The rest of the civilized world does not treat its young people this way. In most other countries, entry into advanced study must be earned through hard work, but it comes free or at very low cost. Part of my own education was in France, where I was one of many who were actually paid to study. Beginning adult life with $40,000 worth of debt or more is unconscionable. How any of our young people can undertake the financial insecurity of an artists’ life with such a burden is heroic. Many can’t.
But some of our young people do learn that artists make art. They take whatever work comes along. They don’t turn down a chance to do their art; they create opportunities for themselves and others. The more they do, the more opportunities they are offered, and then they have more freedom to choose the projects which interest them most. Five or ten years after the BFA or the MFA, these young people have become working artists. They may suffer the misfortune of not having enough money, but they earn something from their artistic endeavors and manage to keep the wolf away from the door one way or another. On the other hand, a few may suffer the misfortune of making too much money too fast, but if they find help in managing it, they can avoid doing harm to themselves or others. Then they are not deprived of the joy of making art, nor do they deprive the world of their creations. Rather, they are vital and alive, wrestling with the demons that plague us all and winning many of those battles.
I applaud them, but I lament that our society treats artists this way. I know from personal experience what it is like to do whatever necessary to dance full time – to work full time at something that pays well but is demanding, and also dance full time; or to work at low paying jobs with schedules that let me rehearse enough so that I can dance full time; or to work part time at various jobs that don’t bring in enough money nor provide health insurance and other benefits, and yet dance full time; or dance full time for a company that offers benefits, but is only able to pay enough for me to live very simply. Unfortunately, I have never known what it is like to dance and earn anything like the money my peers make in other fields or what I would earn if I worked in another field.
I am one of the very fortunate who dances full time, with benefits and enough pay to subsist. However, I also feel lucky to know that I dance full time not because I am more talented or in any way better than other dancers. I do take credit for not refusing work; it was a pivotal policy in my life. It has inspired me to strive to create a company that offers its artists more than just enough money to survive and so frees us from financial concerns enough to be able to focus on our art.
I would however prefer to see an American society that values artistic expression more highly, recognizing that art is where we all live. This would certainly make more art available and accessible to everyone, but it would also necessitate that training for artists, perhaps not in the context of university degree programs, would either have to be free or at very low cost. It’s simply not enough for artists to bear the burden of creation at their own economic expense; art education for everyone would allow people to appreciate the arts at all levels of society. I would also like to see an end to the exploitation of artists and their art forms by corporations in what amounts to abuse in the name of corporate greed.
This proposed revolution would invariably upset the current status quo where only a few art “stars” (who may or may not be our finest artists) are remunerated with fabulous sums while the remaining artists (some of whom are our finest) live in or near poverty. All working artists should be able to make a decent living. I want to see an end to the weird logic that accepts that great artists of the past (who are now recognized) starved because “all artists do,” yet lives comfortably with the belief that living artists who are not rich and famous are simply not deserving! I hear that thinking all the time.
One major challenge facing this society is defining its priorities. Instead of funding what now passes for “defense,” we would have to value art over aggression against other countries. While I would never say that European countries provide utopian environments for their artists, they are much closer to the ideal I envision for the United States. These societies are living proof that we, too, could foster a better environment for artists than we do.
My personal challenge is to continue living every day in the environment of an American society that places less than full value on art. I have committed to doing what is within my power to influence and change the situation for artists.
The first of those is to pay artists who work for my company, American Creative Dance. Even when all we can muster amounts to carfare to rehearsals and performances, we pay. Many people don’t realize or they take for granted the fact that most artists work without compensation in this country. As I write this, Lena is participating in a production in the New York Fringe Festival that involves weeks of work. The production will get press coverage and be a good addition to her resume. But it’s not paid work. By contrast, American Creative Dance is not too proud to only be able to pay a little bit; and, sometimes, when we can, to pay considerably more. We aspire to provide living wages and benefits to all members of the company; I will not rest until we do.
Another commitment I’ve made to myself is to tell artists what I see them do, rather than just pass on judgments I might have made. Sometimes when their achievements are spectacular, I let myself say so, but I try to make sure I also tell them what I saw. We artists need affirmation and understanding more than meaningless praise.
Whether or not my ideal work environment ever materializes, I for one will go on making art and supporting others who also choose to do so. I want a long artist’s life – not a slow death.
About the Author
Nancy Van Ness, founder and Director of the American Creative Dance group in New York City, is a 61 year old modern dancer who has taken up tango in recent years. Always serious about dance, she went to Buenos Aires to study with one of the greatest maestros of that form. Having spent decades in a unitard in small black box theaters making “high art,” she is now sometimes seen in slinky dresses dancing tango con alma y pasión in tango salons and at international dance concerts.
As an unexpected result of her tango dancing, she was cast as the female lead in Tango Passion, a romantic comedy set in a tango salon. Tango Passion is now being featured at film festivals, most recently at the 2007 Boston International Film Festival. Van Ness says, “It is a romantic comedy about people my age instead of young lovers. I took on the role partly to confront stereotypes about who is lovable, who is attractive, who is even visible in our culture.” Filled with many surprises, it is about a couple whose relationship has definitely not lost the spice of life.
Van Ness was, however, shocked to find that the medium works in ways she hadn’t understood before. The exhibit “Dangerous Beauty” at the Chelsea Art Museum elucidated what was troubling her about having played the role of the luscious Claudia in the film.
Van Ness created an innovative, avant garde system of dance and musical accompaniment for her company, American Creative Dance. The troupe’s dance work requires performers to be creators; they do not perform dance classics. All dancers use their own bodies to make art, they do not have an impersonal instrument such as the musician, the painter, or the writer does. But using one’s body as a tool involves risk. Dancers in this troupe create their work in plain view under the audience’s eyes. For further information please visit American Creative Dance.
Nancy Van Ness lives in New York City.
Being voiceless is part of what poverty is about. Listed to the right of this article are stories of poverty – sweatshops – and death due to poverty. As long as the poor are enslaved by the greedy – which has been going on for milleniums – the voices of millions of people – not just those in this country – but millions all over the world – will continue to be silenced. Art will continue to be the luxury of a few. Now, even the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, which used to be free to the public – charges $7.00 per person to enter- except for rare free moments – just as most museums do. Ordinary people are thus exceedingly disenfranchised. Not only can they not produce art – they can’t enjoy it either. They’re successfully pushed out of the “main” – read that “affluent”- stream. I don’t see any solution at hand.
As always stimulating to take part of your writing, Nancy!
Thank you for your article. I guess you just get to the heart of the matter by living it. I appreciate seeing your words especially at this time. The struggle is continuous and some things never get better so there is only the work. Your words are beautiful and true.
Certainly the ACLU is there to remind us of the stolen civil rights and liberties.
Amnesty International reminds us of lost Human Rights.
Freedom, Liberty and Justice are U.S. values that we must protect.
Who stands to protect our culture?
Wal-Mart controls the distribution of music – Are you satisfied with them selecting the music you hear?
In like manner, in a society that seems designed to make the rich richer at the expense of the middle class, who decides the Art that gets promoted. Have you priced opera tickets lately Are you satisfied with the super rich representing you taste?
There are many examples in history of great artists who lived and died in poverty. This article suggests that they will not chose to participate anymore. At least partially, Fall-out can be attributed to the control of our our Arts by the rich.
By Patrice Schexnayder, USA
Nancy Van Ness has written a powerful critique of the way our society often derails its young through the educational process. Too many creative people, who in childhood discovered and knew who they were, and looked joyously toward being an artist in adulthood, have had their destinies foiled.
The problem is, as our culture is structured, students learn early that college is the way to turn a finding of who self is – into one’s life work, and support of self as adult. Unfortunately, a destructive process by which this occurs has been described by Nancy, who says that in the educational context and the inevitable judgment process, a multi-faceted and expected result happens to many an artist: There is judgment; there is no job; and there is no value seen in that self-being.
This is an indictment of how college is experienced by many in America today.
Many centuries ago, when Western higher education began at the University of Paris, the intent was to prepare lawyers, clergy and physicians to take professional positions in society. Their roles were to facilitate order, discipline and good health, and pass on tradition to successive generations.
Over the centuries the economic and social structures have evolved. And in America, higher education became, not a passing on of the learning and tradition of the community, but rather a training ground where individuals learned to compete for positions in the corporate job market. Huge corporations influenced education, and demanded that it be a pipeline filled with workers for those enterprises that feed the “bottom line.” The first sacrificial lamb of the modern system was the artist, the creative one whose gifts were not in demand for operating machinery, and who didn’t work well on the assembly line.
With this transition toward an assembly line educational system, the teachers were silenced by the need to teach to the test. The lawyers were co-opted by institutions which have divided them into camps whose allegiance is not to constitutional rights, but rather to winning at all cost. Winning means money, so it’s not about justice anymore – it’s about financial settlement.
The priests were quieted by their own acquiescence to powers that co-opted their esteemed place – plus, the clergy have been deemed irrelevant by thinking people who find their cosmologies obsolete, or who deem scripture’s concern for justice to be just a tad too challenging to the status quo. And the physicians, God help them if they really feel called to heal, because the insurance companies took some of them under their umbrella, and those who haven’t abandoned their practices due to lawsuits or exorbitant liability insurance, are left to care for everyone else.
“In the olden days” is an expression my siblings and I used often in our childhood years. I don’t know how we came to use it, or even if other people used the expression. Maybe it was a response to the differences we had already perceived between the stories read and told to us, and the world we saw evolving around us. But we knew what it meant – the “olden days” were before the industrial age, when people were connected to the land and to their community. It was a time, almost matriarchal in its structure (in spite of the male dominance of it), when people were “called” to their jobs, whether it was teacher, writer, artist, public servant, fisherman, farmer or banker. I don’t mean to idealize the “olden days” as a time without greed or materialism, or concern for the “bottom line.” But I do intend to acknowledge that most people could find their niche and use their gifts. And I don’t deny that agricultural or urban or seaside life did not dictate how one might make a living. But I do intend to acknowledge that in a local culture, the gifts of each individual were needed.
In those “olden days,” and long before the University of Paris, people learned from tutors and mentors and gained experience as apprentices. A trade was learned, knowledge and wisdom were shared, and the baton was passed down through the generations.
I think again of Nancy’s essay: When Ann and Lena sat down to talk together during the photo shoot, the camera captured them sharing that most ancient experience of learning – the experience of mentor and apprentice – as it was done in the “olden days.” In community, and not as competitors, they spoke as artists – one older and one younger – one wise and one seeking understanding – both as the artists who they really are.
Actually, Nancy wrote about three major characters: There is Ann the dancer, Lena the protégé, and Nancy the matriarch, who as director, broods over the dance company. In those characters we see the educational process at its best, and the passing on of tradition.