Seeking truth in the artifice of beauty, or, the reason artists always lie
It is the very nature of artists to lie. This was the provocative position taken by Laurie Fendrich, associate professor at the University of Hofstra in New York State, in the annual Liberal Arts College Alumni Lecture, held Nov. 11.
As a painter, Fendrich acknowledged that calling her talk “Why Artists Always Lie” set her squarely at the centre of the liar’s paradox. If it is true that artists always lie, could she be truthful, and if she was, would that undermine her own premise?
However, Fendrich dismissed the liar’s paradox as a logic problem. Instead, she argued that, at its core, the artist’s practice is one of artifice, skill and deceit. For instance, the job of actors is to “pretend to be people they aren’t.”
Her lecture touched on the history of Western thought and art very broadly, juggling references to William Shakes-peare, Leonardo Da Vinci, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Plato.
In fact, it was the latter two whom she described as the rare breed of artist/philosophers who were the basis for her reflection. She argued that the relationship between art and philosophy is essentially antagonistic; the artist deals with the superficial while the philosopher forces us to confront the truth.
“The philosopher, by questioning everything, destroys the impulse to create”
“To be both artist and philosopher is rare. The philosopher, by questioning everything, destroys the impulse to create.”
She said that as a practicing artist she has interrogated her own process and purpose and concluded that the sole purpose of art is to “give delight and joy.”
Far from seeing this as a flaw, Fendrich argued that the pursuit of beauty should be reconsidered a noble one.
“Painters want their work to be about more than beauty, but that is because we don’t think beauty is enough any more. Plastic surgery and makeup have made beauty cheap. There are circles where saying your work is about beauty would be death for an artist.”
She dismissed the modern artist’s statement which often begins “my work forces the viewer to confront questions of gender and identity,” by pointing out that only legislation, and not art, can force us to do anything.
Instead, she celebrated the contribution to beauty that all artists make for its own sake.
“If you step back and consider art as a human activity, it shrivels up and dies.”