Why We Want to See Our Fave Artists Naked
Why do some songs, books and works of art touch you irrevocably while others are like the morning dew — impermanent, barely quenching?
It comes down to authenticity doesn’t it?
As a listener or beholder of your art I’m required to meet you, the creator, with my most true self (to the truth level I can access).
That’s the only way to consume art otherwise we might as well be cows ruminating to the iconic chords of Beethoven’s 5th.
It’s only fair that you as a creator meet me with an equivalent depth of truth and openness.
I essentially want to see you at your bath, before that first coat of foundation, without your beard and gear—figuratively that is.
The greatest songs and albums of the moment testify to this. Beyoncé was already a respected and critically acclaimed pop artist.
When she released the self-titled Beyonce (2013) and later Lemonade (2016), she exploded into Pop God status.
What was different? She certainly didn’t unlock chord progressions from an alien dimension.
But, she did give us a glimpse into her boudoir. Her desire, her loves, her ennui and then the festering boil of betrayal and its lancing.
It was glorious.
As a global collective we had to acknowledge those two albums as a work of art even for those whom pop music, RnB and Beyoncé aren’t their cup of tea.
I recently got into her husband Jay Z’s counter point 4:44 (album and single).
Tell me why I was weeping down the highway on my drive back from doing the school run?
Jay Z said,
Like the men before me, I cut off my nose to spite my face
I never wanted another woman to know
Something about me that you didn’t know
I promised, I cried, I couldn’t hold
I suck at love, I think I need a do-over
I will be emotionally available if I invited you over
I stew over, what if you over my shit?
The soulful vocals of Hannah Williams and The Affirmations anchor his apology in honest emotion.
Elsewhere in the pop universe...
Billie Eilish, barely a legal adult has produced two albums worth of the most achingly poignant ballads.
What tumultuous loves could have made her write Happier Than Ever? An album that in my opinion has bucked the sophomore album curse of flopping colossally?
Yet, the album title single “Happier than Ever” is a punk rock catharsis you didn’t know you needed à la Avril Lavigne, circa 2002 or Evanescence, circa 2003.
And there are many such moments of piercing art that feel as if they must have spilled out of the divine cup of beauty.
- The Birth of Venus (Botticelli)
- Air in G String(Bach)
- Florence Welch’s entire body of work
- Fela Kuti’s Roforofo Fight
- Paolo Nutini’s Better Man
- Visoth Kakvei’s ball point madness
- Paloma Negra by Chavela Vargas
- Mutua Matheka’s entire photography catalog
- Across the Universe written by John Lennon and sang by Amy Lee of Evanescence
- Rashid Diab’s melancholy desert scapes filled with anonymous women
The list is truly as endless as the ideas that pass through human minds.
Michelangelo said that he considered himself first and foremost a sculptor because he could see what the block of marble wanted to be
The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material.
What is that chiseling away but the artist sitting in silence and listening, asking, questing as far out into the world as within themselves? Until they reveal the true nature within—the fears, obsessions and dreams?
Amy Lee of Evanescence said it best:
Take my darkest fears and play them
Like a lullaby
Like a reason why
Like a play of my obsessions
Make me understand the lesson
So I’ll find myself
So I won’t be lost again
I want to see your truest, most raw self, unpolished by the lacquer of capitalist commodification, political correctness and fear of judgement.
This isn’t to say that art must be sensationalist or provocative to be true. That said, truth does inevitably rub some people the wrong way.
Michelangelo Buonarroti also said:
The true work of art
is but a shadow of the divine perfection.
May you and I always approach the canvas and pen with true a spirit.
Till we create again.
Krystal
x
