Art strips you naked. 

You may be the kind of artist who makes their own life the centre of their practice, like Tracey Emin; or you may be the kind of artist who hides behind a nickname and never shows their face, like Banksy. But every artwork, everywhere, every time, tears strips out of the artist and expose them for the world to see.

In the well-known work by Marcel Duchamp, it is the bride that it is stripped naked by her bachelors (La mariée mise à nue par ses célibataires). But it is all of us artists who are stripped by our viewers (or our lack of viewers) and stand there naked and vulnerable.

A lot of art is autobiographical of course; artists throughout the ages have always taken from their own life to build the worlds and the works they share with their audience- because what other material do you have other than yourself? What other voice do you have but your own?

If you want to go beyond yourself and create fantasy universes, imaginary landscapes and characters built from nothing, it is still yourself you offer up through these ghosts and chimeras. They feed on the stories you tell yourself, the masks you put on to face the world, the worlds you take refuge in to escape it.  

And this is true even for work resolutely centered around something or someone else. Whether your practice is based on themes of society, politics, bearing witness to a contemporary experience, or it is anchored in the real life of others, for example through portraiture, it will still tend to say more about you, its creator than its model and inspiration- it is your understanding of a social issue that you pursue, your vision of someone else that you share. It is never neutral.

And so how your work is received can feel like life and death, and like a judgement of you as an individual. In our society of consumers, where art is scrolled past and digested without a blink, every post, every exhibition, every sale can feel like a victory,  as if, in a sea of people offering themselves up, you have been seen and heard, you have connected with someone and they recognised you.

But the opposite is true also- it is difficult as an artist not to feel moments of discouragement, not to sometimes invisible and unremarkable. Of course, the myth of the starving artist endures and can offer solace and comfort in these moments; after all, some of the greatest artists in the world were not appreciated in their lifetime and dealt with hardship, loneliness and poverty before ultimately touching wide audiences and being universally admired and praised.

But I am not sure that this romantic myth is that helpful, because it still relies on others for validation, for approval. What if the act of creating, of opening yourself up was enough in itself, without a reaction? What if you created and you performed for yourself only, and could look back on your work with satisfaction because you created it for itself -of itself- without an audience in mind?

What is the bride laid herself bare, rather than being stripped by the bachelors?

In the words of French Poet René Char: “Impose your luck, embrace your happiness, and go towards your risk. They will get used to watching you”  (“Impose ta chance, serre ton bonheur et va vers ton risque. À te regarder, ils s’habitueront.”)