Escaping Genius

.I am just watching a video about Lilias Trotter, the immensely talented artist and long time protege and friend/companion, but most likely never lover of John Ruskin - the English writer, philosopher, art critic, polymath, and grand high influencer of all art in the Victorian era. It is a rather serendipitous video to have chosen for tonight as I have been spending several weeks now using “artists” as the search term for browsing Curiosity Stream.  Naturally, all the A-list artists are there, Van Gogh, O'Keeffe, DaVinci, Monet, Le Brun, Picasso, Rembrandt, etc., and others like Trotter whose names do not fall as trippingly off the tongue. The videos are of varying quality. The best seem to be those produced in France or French-British joint ventures.  Interestingly some of the searches conflated artist and genius, which is to be expected. However, Trotter more than any other, confirms what I often espoused to my students when reflecting on the place that art played in the life of an individual who truly lived the life of an artist. “Art,” I would declare, from my perhaps undeserved, but freely employed role of “the sage on the stage”,  “Is not so much something you chose to do. Rather it is something you come to realize you cannot do without.” 

Trotter, who according to Ruskin could have been the greatest female painter in history, found herself in a double bind. A watercolor genius of the first order, she was also a devout - some might say fanatical - Christian, called to minister to the poorest of the poor. She eventually followed her spiritual calling to become a missionary among the poor in Algeria in 1887. But she never really gave up painting. She kept a journal filled with sketches and watercolors until her death in 1928. She also maintained an illustrated correspondence with Ruskin for more than 20 years. So did she give up her art? In a sense maybe, but perhaps more accurately she married her art to her other great passion, her faith.

Like many things I may have professed throughout my years as a professor, I may have oversimplified my lecture on art. A more accurate assertion could be, to conflate artist and genius myself, that great artists - artists whose works becomes timeless - are geniuses who spend their lives driven by the pursuit of perfection in an art they can never fully abandon. And it is that realization that confirms for me the certainty that I will remain eternally grateful that my DNA unfolded in such a way as to spare me the backhanded blessing of genius. 

I do have some skills that occasionally edge above the middle of the bell-shaped curve, but truth be told, they most often remain in the realm of “art for the artist.” To clarify, creative endeavors can - or so I would profess - broadly be broken into two categories: therapeutic art, art we create for the pleasure, joy, or healing it brings to us; and art that informs, broadens, or advances ART writ large. There is certainly some overlap between the two. Emily Dickinson springs to mind. A poet who wrote, apparently, for the joy and healing it brought her, publishing only a handful of the 1800 or so poems she wrote during her lifetime. It was only later that we discovered the genius of this closet poet who, seemingly unintentionally, advanced the path of big ART.

So where does this leave us in our relationship to art? A bit stranded I would contend. To wander off course a bit, in my years in the classroom of what was largely and erroneously seen as an easy major, Communication, I encountered more than my share of student-athletes. Youngsters with dreams of "the pros" dancing in their eyes. While perhaps a handful realized those dreams to a certain extent, only Russell Wilson, stellar quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, has achieved the level of fame and success of which the others dreamed. One out of the thousands of dreamers who passed through my classrooms. However, it would seem to counter the reasons I put my own dreams of artistic theatrical stardom aside and sought a somewhat smaller stage, to overtly discourage the dreamers out there in my smaller audience.

So I built in a compromise. As communication could lead to a myriad of careers, I had a standard "think past graduation" exercise in my introduction to communication course. Basically the student had to write an essay about the career they intended to pursue after graduation. And list what courses here at State would best prepare them for that career. But it was a two-part question. The second part was "If your ideal career fails to materialize for whatever reason, what is your fall back option that would allow you to still put all your preparation to good use?" One covert motivation for this follow-up question was to give the NFL, NBA, WNBA, MLB, Olympian, Academy Award, Grammy dreamers a chance to think outside their dream.

Still for most of us, following the art that brings us happiness, joy, calm, inner peace, is by far the best path. Do not worry that you will have missed the chance to live out your inner genius. If genius does reside within you, chances are it will reach in, grab you by the scruff of your neck, and shake you until you can see nothing but its burning demands.

.