27.06.2024
Notoriously – and as everyone knows by now – Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting during his lifetime. Four months before his suicide. He never got any love for his work. Yet, obsession and compulsion being what they are, belief being what it is, the artist persisted for ten years in painting, doing about one painting every three days.
Aside from his inconvenient suicide, Van Gogh survived in the art world for a decade. A world that is precarious, unforgiving, harsh, deadly. This world was probably what resulted in his eventual mental illness and suicide. To throw a pearl before the swine, you have to form the pearl. Which takes something from you. The inner resources that you have. There is a test of endurance and resilience, mental and physical strength. The game of the will.
What was it about Van Gogh that allowed him to survive?
We all know the story about his loving brother. He had a family support system.
But this is something besides the point. Because, in reality, despite letters and money, Van Goth was fundamentally by himself in this world.
So, there was something inside the man that enabled him to survive. Despite indifference, apathy – perhaps even the hostility of a world full of philistines and their tedious, selfish grasping lives.
Myself, I have been in the artist game for about eight years now. And I spent about a decade becoming a doctor in English Literature, Law and Photography. I have lived in this horrible world of art for almost as long as Vincent Van Gogh.
While I do not compare myself to a man that is undoubtedly an artistic genius (because my authentic talent is, after all, in scholarship), there is a strategy I have followed to gift the world with my creativity despite lack of any recognition or any response. Perversity.
What is perversity? One aspect is stubbornness. By giving nothing for what we produce, the world of philistines thinks that it can choke us of resources. To go on without getting anything out of it is the real revolt against this disgusting selfish and grasping capitalistic society.
What does it mean to get literally nothing out of art? When I began in art on Instagram, I used to get about fifty likes for each piece. As the algorithm changed and got more commercialised – and as my art actually improved from beginner level – the likes kept on dwindling until I ended up with maybe one or two likes if I was lucky for every artwork. For free art, I wasn’t even getting the dopamine hit or gratification of a like.
But perversity says to keep on going. The stubbornness.
And perversity is also spite. Why should I change my art for the taste of this public? You look at the artists that are famous in this era and they very seldom make anything notable or beautiful. Do they even have a real message? Most of them are slaves to the system. In fact, if you see an artwork that is accepted by this public, that is probably what it is: the dealings of the dominated. The ones fucked by the state and its racism and misogyny. And that like being fucked by the state and its racism and misogyny.
Perversity says, every day, to sit there at my tablet with my stylus and force my art in the world’s face. This world that wants to forget your name and body because you have brown skin. Because you are a man from a different culture with a different perspective. Because they could not kill what was Indian within you.
Perversity is when you live out of spite. When you perform out of spite. When you make art out of spite. When you make poetry out of spite. When you write out of spite. When you know that you will never get anything out of it, but you keep on going. Perversity is when you look at this disgusting world with contempt knowing that they don’t value education, reading, knowledge, truth. When they value only slavery. And racism and misogyny.
And perversity is when you accept that for what you do you will be ignored and looked upon with contempt. When you work in digital art when everyone hates digital art. When you study art history because the government says they want to scrap degrees without a commercial value. When you have studied English Literature which employers don’t value as a real degree. When you work in arts and charities when the government doesn’t even want to support them and the people in this society don’t see you as a real man for working in those jobs.
Perversity is the strength that is behind the persistence and the stubbornness. Because fuck the boring nine to five lifestyle of drudgery that is capitalism’s dream. Because fuck the people that see you only as money. Because fuck the government that has no taste, no knowledge, no nothing. Only dirty power and the pretence of benevolence. Because fuck what is selfish, grasping, immoral, unjust. Without perversity, there would be nothing. Because in the arts, because for the brown man, there is nothing to be had. Only the work. Only the indifference. Only the hostility. And only perversity.
diary of a lone man 