Dangerous Art

The other night I dragged out my book on artist block, Fearless Creating, in hopes that it might spark some inspiration to create art once more since typically I only have to re-read the first chapter to find my muse. Well, this time was different…this time I started to understand one of the chapters that discusses dangerous art with greater clarity. When I first read it years ago, I didn’t quite understand the implications…until that point in my artistic life…I had never encountered danger art. To me, all art was good. I didn’t quite comprehend the bounds that our art can challenge us until I felt it myself.

While it is easy to tell another artist to keep exploring, when it comes to dangerous art, it’s just not that simple. Dangerous art not only challenges the viewer, it challenges the creator. As Eric Maisel states in Fearless Creating:

When you hold the desire to create deeply, you bypass the top of your mind, you bypass your safety net of formula, you bypass marketing considerations, and you travel to a region where truth resides. And what is the truth if not dangerous? Will you choose to work on the idea that arises from that place? Will you choose to do that dangerous thing? For what the work based on a truthful idea reveals may not be pretty. It may not please your parents. It may not please the people you expose. It may not please you, when you stop and see that you had that inside you. Why, then do it? For the sake of truth and beauty and for the sake of authentic living. Period. But the decision to make such a choice remains a hard one.