THE PRICE OF SUCCESS

The Price of Success

Success is what we all hope for as artists. And, when you achieve success, enjoy the moment and bask in the glow -- at least for a while.

But success often does not last. And even worse your success can come to haunt you, as your later work will be compared to your earlier "successful" work. More than one artist has been caught in this trap.

But as they say on Facebook, "It's complicated." One man who managed musicians said something like, "Artists can handle failure magnificently but I have never met one who can handle success."

Oddly success has its own demands, demands that most of us are unfamiliar with and unprepared for. It's kind of like winning the lottery. You have all this money but now what do you do? People treat you differently, you don't have to show up at work anymore, you need to find something to do with all your free time and everyone expects a handout. More than one lottery winner has gone through their fortune in a short time -- when they could have lived their entire lives on the money they won if it had been managed just a little bit better.

Artists, in particular, can feel trapped by their own fame and popular creations. The reason is simple. Artists like to create and keep on creating. But this means that their art will change and evolve. When an artist invents a popular style, many fans won't like it when the artist branches out into something different. This happened to Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell, and Jackson Pollock, for example.

The friend and critic, Clement Greenberg, of Jackson Pollock, said that Pollock never created a 'fake' Pollock. By that, he meant that Jackson could have gone on making dripped paintings and selling them for gobs of money, but he wanted to move on. Many of his last paintings were done with traditional brushes and tube paint rather than his popular dripped paintings where he used sticks to throw liquid paint onto the canvas. And his later paintings were not as well appreciated.

Success can be a kind of straight jacket. The attention your work got can make you self-conscious, for example. You may end up competing with yourself -- is your new work as good or as profound as your earlier work? Some critics like it, some don't. Some critics may even say nasty things about it. Do you take these comments to heart, do you reply, do you ignore them, do you care?

It is very hard to not be affected by a bad review and even more to avoid having that review affect your work. Some artists withdraw as a result.

Your first loyalty, if that is the right word, should always be to your art. If you have developed a style that you like and you are comfortable with it, keep on keeping on. But if you feel the need to move on, pay attention to that as well. You are, I believe, married to your art, to the creation of your art. You are not married to what people think about it.

Take the example of Tennessee Williams. He was an unknown playwright who worked constantly. From an early age, he wrote several hours each day. At one point, with the right agent, his work took off and he almost single-handedly kept the Broadway theaters in New York in the black. Play after play was both shocking and well-received as his writing broke new ground. His work ventured into emotional areas that had not been presented on stage and also subjects that had been taboo. Then (you knew this was coming), after about fifteen years, his star began to set. Williams, however, never stopped writing. According to his friends, he wrote every day no matter what. And he turned out over twenty works in his later years. While his late plays are quite different from his earlier popular ones, he stayed true to his muse. He is now considered one of the three greatest American playwrights along with Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller.

Success is a hard taskmaster. Achieving success is difficult and can take years of constant struggling along with a good dose of luck. It can be fickle, often unfair and subject to chance. But holding onto success is even harder. More than one actor has achieved top billing, only to see their name get smalleR and slide down the list on a poster for a play. A leading man or woman may be asked to play a supporting film role as they age. Few people handle this kind of demotion very well.

Fiction writers have their own special problems. Much of fiction is often thinly disguised non-fiction, as characters are often based on friends and family. And this can cause major problems for a writer's relationships.

This concept of success as a slippery slope has been explored in the four films based on "A Star Is Born" which was first shot in 1937 but was done recently in 2018. I personally recommend the 1937 version for sheer heartbreaking reality.

A Star Is Born (1937) Full HD Movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h2s1elEYMQ

Now, I do not want to end this article on such a negative note. I just want to warn you that success ain't always what it's cracked up to be. Hope for success, enjoy it if you get it, but keep your eyes on the prize. And that prize is the authenticity of your work. The reason why you get up every morning and feel alive.