The Artist's Struggle

Franklin's recent blog post has got me to thinking (damn you, Franklin!).

Generally I have found that art can be divided into two categories: fast art and slow art. Slow art is carefully considered, well-thought out, and subject to multiple corrections and revisions. Fast art is spontaneous, immediate, and free flowing.

Both methods have their strengths and failures, but generally fast art (comic books, web comics, television, etc.) is considered low brow and slow art (sculpting, painting, novel, classical composition) is considered high brow... excepting, of course, that the prejudices regarding the medium will win out. Therefore, a slow, carefully thought out comic book like Sandman or Preacher will always be considered inferior to a quickly conceived painting or classical score.

I have always had a special love for fast art... the laissez faire, fuck-it-I'm-done attitude suggests a certain immediacy regarding the connection between artist and art admirer. As I have said before, I am a lover of classic vaudeville in part because they were artists who were constantly inventing and refining their art... often while on stage. In fact, part of the success of their craft depends on the feeling of immediacy. You can see this in stand-up comics who talk as though they are just coming up with funny ideas off the top of their head, but really they have a script that they have carefully refined over many performances. Sometimes they go off script and then some of that material makes its way into their act.

But I'm also a lover of fantasy and sci-fi, and I know that my favorite stories have tons of backstory. Many have large Bibles like the Silmarillion or The Rivan Codex which illustrates in detail characters, societies, histories, religions, forms of currency, etc. And I appreciate when that all comes together with a good story navigating me through a complex fantastical world. This is the method I'm taking with Astounding Adventures.

I have a sort of romanticism about the golden age of comics, Hollywood, and vaudeville, but the truth is that their fast and gritty style was born out of desperation. Most of them didn't see what they were doing as art. It was just a job and they were cranking out material as fast as possible just to meet the demand. Because of that, there is this massive explosion of subconscious thought which eventually took shape in forms that weren't conceived of at the time.

As an artist of any sort knows, your subconscious mind is incredibly important to the process. Often we don't even recognize what we are doing until we look back on it. Never is this more true than when we are trying to make a deadline.

This brings up a somewhat related issue of artistic freedom versus editorial control. Most writers will say they hate deadlines (except for Douglas Adams who said, "I love deadlines. I especially like that whooshing sound they make as they go flying by."), but generally I've found that when artist's are given complete artistic freedom, they produce less and what they produce is often lacking structure. Some artists just become lazy, others forget to make their art entertaining when they don't have to balance commercial demands.

Personally, some of my favorite artists were also very commercial. Hitchcock is a great example. As much as he was experimental and groundbreaking, he was constantly putting the public demand before his art because he knew that if it didn't succeed, he couldn't get the funding he needed to keep working. Chinese director/actor/comedian/martial artist Stephen Chow is the same way. He balances his reputation and hometown-hero identity as a Hong Kong film maker with Chinese national film identity and growing opportunities for an international market. (I took a class in Chinese film and wrote a paper on Stephen Chow in particular... I also had a Hitchcock class.)

In order to get what I want out of Astounding Adventures, I think I'll have to try to evoke both styles. I want a lot of shorter, self-contained stories that build into a larger mosaic in a dramatic storyarc. I also want those short stories to be meaningful and poignant similar to The Spirit, Twilight Zone, or even Star Trek where each story is, if not a parable, then at least a portrait which reveals something unique or emotionally impactful. By having such a large cast, I am able to tell longer storyarcs with some (The Mechanic, The Enigma, Dr. Alchemy, Rosie, Vesper) and vignettes with others (Tin Man, Twilight & Dawn, Tokyo Rose, etc.).