Serious art does not deliver pleasure to the artist. To say that is to repeat the obvious… Kafka is the model of the serious artist: Kafka, the writer who burned almost everything he wrote and who lived as a complete anonymous. What did art give him? Nothing, but affliction. Anyone who thinks art delivers any kind of contentment is completely unaware of it. The artist works for dozens of hours: he creates the work. And then, what does he do? or even: what good does the work do him? At first, serious art does not sell—and it is an insult to think that it is made to sell;—then, it is a joke to imagine someone like Kafka satisfied or contented by glimpsing what he has birthed. Kafka certainly reread his works, which is why he burned them. A serious work, once created, repulses the artist; once created, it has to disappear from his field of vision. For the rest, there is what art delivers: endless hours of bitterness and a final disgusting judgment. Like Kafka, it is to leave unpublished the work of a lifetime and to order in a will: “Burn everything that is left of me!”.
Serious Art Does Not Deliver Pleasure to the Artist
