Art is Hell
by Ursula Vernon

I came back from the memorial of an art professor of mine today—Jerry Rudquist, blindingly good teacher, taught me more about color than I even quite realize. He was also a good artist. I personally didn’t care for his stuff much, but he was good.

The memorial service made me think more heavily about an off-the-cuff comment I made to a buddy of mine on-line, about Artist’s Hell. Not, mind you, that Rudquist belongs in such—he was a wonderful teacher and a magnificent human being, a man of infinite encouragement and good humor, and also the only art prof I ever had that, when told I wanted to paint commercial fantasy art, said “Great!” and began laughing madly about putting UFOs into my dragon paintings.

But bear with me, here.

Postulate for a moment a Christian god and universe. I don’t believe it, and maybe neither do you, but it’s a nice, elegant framework to hang the next words on.

Most artists are going to hell.

It’s not that we’re any worse than the average human being. We’re no more inclined than anyone else to kill, steal, or covet our neighbor’s yak. Nor do we lie any more than the statistical norm, nor do we fail conspicuously as a demographic to honor our father and mother. No, the commandment we break is the big one, right at the top.

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

All great artists are going to hell, along with most of the good ones, and those who aren’t real skilled, but who’s hearts are at least in it. The reason for this is simple—because each and every one of us, over any named or unnamed God, worships Art. Does anyone, anywhere, think that Michelangelo sculpted “David” in order to bring further glory to the killer of Goliath? Or did he sculpt it because he could, because it was beautiful, for the glory of artistry, because his muse drove him to with the same invisible whip that the rest of us are driven?

Show of hands? Mmm-hmm. That’s what I thought.

Show me the artist who wouldn’t rip down the church of faith to erect a temple to the muse, and I’ll show you someone I wouldn’t want to be stuck on a desert island with. A lot of artists, particularly those raised Catholic, feel guilty about this, and it’s perhaps telling that there are a lot of ex-Catholic artists, God evidentally being easier to dispense with than the itch of hands on marble or that sort’ve orgasmic catch in the throat when confronted with a fresh tube of alizarin crimson.

I don’t know. Maybe they can’t co-exist at all, come to that. If we were made in God the creator’s image, then how can we not love creating? But God is a jealous God, after all, and cast the chief of angels down for infringing on his prerogative. It was the knowledge that made us more like God that got us thrown from the Garden.

There were no artists in Eden.

There could be no creating in that place. Better writers than I have said to fear, above all things, the masterpiece—that there is hope in error, but none at all in perfection. It took the knowledge of destruction to awaken the desire for creation, and while the Serpent may be reviled by priests, every artist worth their salt ought to put out a warm rat and a word of thanks for him. After all, the muse is first cousin to the succubus and the siren, and the first definition of “eros” was “the desire to create.”

So most artists are in hell.

When you get to hell, you will find that it’s an art gallery, which probably suprises very few of us. The champagne is flat, the crackers are stale, and there’s cat hair stuck to the cheese log, because this is hell, remember. And you will walk through this gallery, where your work is on display—every scrap of work you created from cradle to grave, every scribble and forgotten doodle. There’s an entire wing of things scratched on phonebook covers and post-it notes.

Satan will walk through the gallery with you, because, again to no one’s surprise, Satan is a great patron of the arts. When the Serpent slithered out of the tree to offer Eve the fruit of knowledge, there was a paintbrush in his tail. And he will point out the good bits, and the bad bits—and like any good critic, he will leave the very worst of the bad bits only hinted at, because you know what they are, and you will torment yourself more over it than he will say.

And eventually—not quite an eternity later, because the amount of art that anyone, in any lifetime can create is finite—you will reach the end.

And he will look at you, with wise, infinite, savage eyes, and he will say, very gently, “And is this all?”

And you'll look at the vast gallery of what you've created, and you'll see it in relation to the infinitely vaster gallery of things you were never able to paint.

And that will be enough.

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Web Goddess' Note:
Ursula was our May 2002 Artist of the Month. See her work here. Visit her web site here. Or just wait till we can all meet one another in Hell. It's all good. If you can't wait that long, click the link below.

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