Art and Entitlement

David duChemin has written a great article about Art, Humility and Entitlement at his blog.

The following paragraphs resonated with me so I thought I'd share them here.

Humility is a true recognition of one's place - to recognize
that you are gifted, brilliant, beautiful, whatever the attribute you possess in abundance - without making it more, or less, than it truly is. It is from that place of honesty and vulnerability that great people, and artists, make their mark. It lives in brilliant tension between knowing we're better at being ourselves than we once were, and not yet as skilled at it as we will be. It's the tension between gratitude for what we are and have, and the striving to make the most of our gifts that we can. It's loving ourselves as we've been made by our Creator, without thinkin someone else holds lower cards.

Nowhere within that tension is there a place for entitlement. Entitlement within an artist creates works of narcissism and solipsism - works that, instead of being an act of giving to the world, are acts of attempted taking. The belief that the world owes you something, anything, in return for your "unique greatness", will eat at your own soul and contribute nothing to the world. Why should it? Afterall, it's the world that owes you something and not vice-versa.

The rest of the article can be found here:

http://www.fearfullyhuman.com/fearfully_human/2007/06/the-ugliness-of.html