The cult of the artist
The cult of the artist
Dismantling the myth of genius
Pre-Christian Rome was brimming with geniuses – but not in the way we understand the word now. Every person, place and thing had its own genius. Men, women, children; houses, theatres, vineyards. Each of these things was bestowed with a divine spirit that looked after it through its life cycle – a precursor to the concept of the guardian angel.
The word itself comes from the Latin root gignere – to beget, to bring forth, to generate. It shares ancient roots with cognates in Sanskrit, Armenian, Greek, Gothic, Welsh, Old English, Old Irish – the list goes on. For as long as people have been born, there have been geniuses charged to them. Attendant spirits, guiding lights.
The definition of “genius” began to morph in the late 16th century, arguably with the arrival of the world’s first art history book: Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists in 1550. The Renaissance – “the rebirth” – looked to the classical world as a guiding light, and the concept of the genius particularly resonated.
Until then, the purpose of European art was largely didactic in nature. It had a strictly defined function: to educate (often illiterate) viewers in the matters of religion. Because painting was a means of ecclesiastical communication, it didn’t matter who painted it. Painters were craftsmen, artisans, working to the specifications of their patrons. There was a natural separation between art and artist, and the value of a work of art was defined by the quality of the painting, the subject matter and who had commissioned it.
One of the greatest shifts of the Renaissance was the birth of the artist. Art with a capital A. The Lives of the Artists was the first study to categorise paintings and sculpture on the basis of the people (read: men) who had created them, in chronological order, rather than the paintings themselves. Biography became paramount.
Michelangelo, Vasari’s favourite artist, was the art world’s first superstar. Three biographies were written about him while he was still alive. He saw his own talents as god-like, and encouraged the nickname Il Divino. His larger-than-life personality was documented in great detail: his terrible tantrums, his strange personal quirks, his monumental ego, and above all else, his astonishing creativity. It was as if he were Adam himself, touched by God’s divine spark. The birth of the genius, immortalised on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Our modern-day views about artistic genius were born in the Renaissance, but reached maturity in the Victorian age. Its apotheosis arrives in the form of Vincent Van Gogh, who never sold a single painting in his own lifetime, and is arguably more famous for cutting off his own ear than for the contents of his paintings (ask any schoolchild, and it’s the first thing they’ll tell you about him).
This flavour of genius is one of our most compelling archetypes. A brooding outsider, charismatic, misunderstood, gifted with an exceptional intellect that threatens to drive him mad – and I say him, because this genius is almost always male.
Such forces of personality are found throughout popular culture, upholding the myth that the greatest works of art are born of a highly individual creativity. We revere these visionaries, as if they are truly in communion with the divine. Not that these works are, in fact, the product of a complex web of interconnected influences, building on the legacies of those who have come before.
Bob Dylan is perhaps the quintessential musical genius. His towering reputation was cemented by the win of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” He seemed to emerge fully formed in the early 1960s – a lyrical, guitar-strumming genius, as natural as Michelangelo’s Adam. Fellow folk singer (and one-time girlfriend) Joan Baez characterises just like that in Diamonds and Rust (1975).
But where would Dylan be without Baez? When the two met in 1961, Baez was already lauded as one of the leading voices of the folk scene, while Dylan was not only an “unwashed phenomenon” – as Baez puts it – but a relatively unknown one. In 1963, the couple went on tour together, with Baez’s tuneful covers of Dylan’s songs taking the edge off them, making them palatable. That same year, Dylan’s own career exploded with the release of Blowin’ in the Wind, canonised as the archetypal protest song of the 1960s.
Dylan’s lyrical gifts are undeniable, but they do not exist in isolation. The melody of Blowin’ in the Wind is adapted from an old African-American spiritual, No More Auction Block, a protest song sung by freed slaves in the 1800s.
Having swept in on the wave of the Civil Rights Movement in the ’60s, Dylan’s musicianship and style owes much to the rich tradition of African-American folk and protest music that came before him – especially the music of Odetta Holmes. He has cited Odetta – hailed as the “Queen of American folk music” by Martin Luther King Jr. – as the reason he first took an interest in the genre, trading his electric guitar for an acoustic after hearing her records for the first time. Odetta was instrumental to the revival of American folk traditions in the 1950s and ’60s, including blues, jazz and spirituals, and was a key voice in the Civil Rights Movement. She inspired countless artists of the era, including Harry Belafonte, Mavis Staples and Janis Joplin.
One of the other great guiding lights of 20th century music – and another of Dylan’s heroes – was the legendary Robert Johnson. The Delta Blues guitarist of the 1930s is one of the most enigmatic figures in music history, having supposedly sold his soul to the Devil at a crossroads in exchange for musical success. He was renowned for his mastery of the blues guitar, and many of his songs have become blues standards, timeless classics of the genre.
His recording career only lasted seven months, before his untimely death in 1938 at the age of 27 (decades before the 27 Club became a thing). Yet his legacy is peerless. He has inspired countless rock stars throughout the 20th century – including Keith Richards and Robert Plant – to the extent that he has been called “the first ever rock star”. Which rock star, after all, doesn’t dream of trading their soul for unworldly gifts? Another legendary force of personality, albeit touched by the diabolical rather than divine.
Originality is one of the defining traits in the myth of artistic genius. Talent is regarded as something that one is born with – you either have it or you don’t – not something that is, in fact, fluid, evolving and continuously inspired by others. The cult of the artist is a carefully constructed story built on personality over substance – one biased in favour of white, male protagonists.
The trope of genius isn’t confined to music and art. We find it across the wine industry – figures who can move mountains on account of their personality alone – and in culinary spheres too. In her fascinating book Small Fires, Rebecca May Johnson speaks about the conflict between recipes and preconceptions about creative genius. The act of following a recipe is regarded by some – including English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott – as the antithesis of genius. It is anti-originality. The creative cook is one who can supposedly whip up a thrilling, imaginative feast out of nowhere, with no references. Chef with a capital C. Cooking becomes an expression of a spontaneous, highly individual creativity – which is fine, if you only have yourself to feed. Gendered privilege rears its head again.
Women are typically forced to choose between a creative life and providing for others. We only need to look to Dylan’s contemporary, Joni Mitchell, to see this contrast in action. When the 21-year-old Mitchell discovered she was pregnant, just as she was trying to carve out a life as a musician, she was faced with limited options.
“My daughter's father left me three months pregnant in an attic room with no money and winter coming on and only a fireplace for heat. The spindles of the banister were gap-toothed – fuel for last winter's occupants,” she wrote.
She secretly put her child up for adoption in 1965 – an experience that she has described as traumatic, but equally the spark that ignited her musical career. Her songs are infused with that sense of loss and melancholy, and she references her lost daughter in Little Green and Chinese Cafe. When the story was sold to the press in 1993, readers judged her harshly for being a bad mother. Yes, she was able to stake out her place as one of the 20th century’s greatest songwriters, but at the cost of her only child. Dylan, on the other hand, was able to nurture a monumentally successful musical career while fathering six children.
Why are most of history’s greatest luminaries made up of men? Because our understanding of genius is innately flawed, intertwined with the social privileges and traits associated with masculinity. As writer Cody Delastry points out, “the very notion of genius is gendered, and thus defining it becomes a tautology: the Artistic Genius is male because men are most fit to be Artistic Geniuses.”
Our conception of genius as an isolated phenomenon only reinforces this fallacy. We celebrate the white, male poet for the clarity of his voice and vision – his ability to create dazzling new expressions – without looking more closely at the rich traditions that inspire and guide him. That’s not to diminish his talents in the slightest, but rather to place them in their context. The best works of art shine a light on the world around us, revealing our connections to one another, just as Dylan’s songs do.
No person is an island. Unlike Michelangelo’s Adam, we are not born fully formed, blessed by some divine force. Like the word “genius” itself, we are tangled in a wider web of people and influences across time and space. Always guided by the attendant spirits of those who have come before.