The Lift!

Gino Severini

It is a well-known and well-worn myth that artists live a life of struggle. Why? And is it true?

Here is the deal. It is the nature of things. The yin yang, the polemic, the night and day of it all. When we talk about the glass half empty we are reminded the it is not so much about the facts, because the glass is both half empty and half full, but how we choose to look at them. How we choose to look at things is a powerful thing, so powerful in fact that we fight over the right to say which is which. Just look at the conflict tearing the Arab world apart. Or the one over the unborn child. We want to be able to say whether the glass is half full or half empty. We want to be able to control the value that that represents on so many levels.

Politics.

Alberto Giacometti

The art world is both political and well beyond politics. Politically the usual stuff happens with who's on top, who gets to decide, etc, etc. But in order for that to happen you have to have people devoting themselves to art: artists.

Gino Severini

If I have learned one thing about art, and life through art, is that in art you can make things better. That maybe that is the whole point! In a million ways!

Serge Poliakoff

That is why the whole artist struggle thing is just glass half empty. The full half is making things better, making things wonderful!

Serge Poliakoff

How can anyone deny the truth of this. Whatever struggle Van Gogh suffered, art was not only the good part, it was the great part. It made his life awesome.

Gino Severini

Now does every artist suffer from not getting enough love for their work?

Andre Derain

Only if they are looking for love in all the wrong places! Only if they doubt their own love. Only if the love they don't get makes them doubt their own love.

Gino Severini

Love is all around us!

Stepanova

The artist learns early that they have the power to create, to make something from nothing, to bring order to chaos, to bring freedom to order, to bring light to darkness, to bring color, to bring life, to bring perfection, and harmony, and inspiration, and revelation, and peace.

Stepanova and Rodchenko

Is struggle built into that, of course. We wouldn't prize it if there wasn't. As they say: if it was easy...

Andre Derain

So just remember when you think about giving up on art, that it isn't art that let you down. Art smiles upon you. Art is always there to lift you up!

Stepanova and Popova

Addison Parks
Spring Hill

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