What powers artists who reach old age? The work

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/12/06/artists-old-age-hockney-bourgeois-katz/

by drdee • 4 years ago

69 28 4 years ago

washingtonpost.com

andsoitis• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/2022.12.07-184802/https://www.washingtonp...

bigbluedots• 4 years ago

Or, just not dying

trelane• 4 years ago

Seems like a shallow comment, but it's not. Some (many?) die long before they die physically. These folks retained their vitality long into old age.

psychomugs4• 4 years ago

"The creative adult is the child who survived." - Ursula K. Le Guin

pcurve• 4 years ago

It's one thing to paint in front of canvas into 80s and 90s, but it's truly remarkable to built large spider sculptures like Louise Bourgeois did at the same ages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maman_(sculpture)

lolive• 4 years ago

That makes me think about David Bowie’s last album. I am pretty neutral on his previous creations. But his last album really resonates in me.

And I wonder how you do feel when you have reached such a level of expertise, and are given an unknown amount of limited time to achieve your last creation.

mgkimsal3• 4 years ago

Have you listened to Brainwashed by George Harrison? It was his last album, knowing he had cancer and had limited time... wondering if you may have similar resonance with that one.

te_chris2• 4 years ago

Also Warren Zevon’s last album. Keep Me In Your Heart For A While might be the perfect goodbye song.

yowlingcat• 4 years ago

Definitely the exact same artist/album pairing I thought of as well. It's an incredible album from someone who was already at the top of his game. He almost appears to be pulling beyond the limits of mortality by acknowledging it.

Tade02• 4 years ago

My mother is an artist by education, but she didn't pursue a career in art, and opted for being an artisan and practicing art in her spare time. She's now retired and is only occasionally asked to do some part time work.

By her account now is the best time for actual creativity. There's no pressure to stand out and as a long time member of the artist association she can count on some space to show off her work should she wish so, but most of her paintings never see a larger audience because she now paints things that match her taste alone. It's kind of therapeutic really.

She also does sculpture because every painter eventually becomes a sculptor and every sculptor eventually becomes a painter.

People who went down the path of being a career artist are in a generally worse position now, because that's all they know and what they invested all their time in and unfortunately most of them didn't make much of a name for themselves.

gannonburgett2• 4 years ago

"She also does sculpture because every painter eventually becomes a sculptor and every sculptor eventually becomes a painter."

I've noticed this through various reading and art classes back at university, but I've never quite come across a reason why this tends to hold true across the two domains. Why do you think that is? Or, better yet, why does your mother think that is?

Tade02• 4 years ago

I called her specifically to ask this, so here goes:

It's part urban legend, part self-fulfilling prophecy and part other reasons, namely:

Sculpting is hard, manual labour. And expensive at that due to the sheer volume of the medium along with storage space requirements. Over time people simply get sick of dealing with the day to day hardships of this artform so they turn to something lighter - like painting.

Painters on the other hand get bored of exploring the limitations of their field - some of which, like avoiding the colour black, are akin to the tabs vs spaces debate in IT, so they try other forms.

Ultimately artists will eventually try every medium that catches their interest just like musicians try other instruments and sometimes even get good at them. Professionally they just stick to what they know.

keiferski• 4 years ago

Not mentioned in the article: Michelangelo, who outlived pretty much all of his contemporaries and, "late in life, took on a series of huge, daunting projects, fully aware that he would never live to see them completed."

https://web.archive.org/web/20200629202130/https://www.nyboo...

nikhizzle• 4 years ago

So this is not in regards to art, but instead with regards to building software. In my 40s I feel like my brain is finally working. Things which seemed extremely difficult a few years, I can now build with clarity and simplicity. People and political issues which seemed so difficult are now child's play. Consequently, the type of opportunities I am getting are very different from before, and much more interesting.

What have I lost - outside of my most favorite areas, my taste for theoretical CS which previously drove is completely gone. I'm now looking for work that is it's own reward.

What powers artists who reach old age? The work

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