AGE, RETIREMENT AND THE FALLACY OF YOUTH

There are questions that recur frequently in my life and with them come inbuilt assumptions. The first is ‘when did you decide to become an artist? and the second ‘are you retired?’  Grey hair seems to prompt the latter question while a belief in a specific starting point is a common misconception.  I’ve had greying hair for half a lifetime which creates all sorts of confusion for people wanting to make an assessment of age. ‘You don’t look your age’ or ‘you haven’t changed a bit’ are common responses. It has more to do with the self-conscious realisation of everyone else that they are falling apart rather than me at a temporal stand still. On the other side of the coin the innumerable art magazines that will publish your work for a fee per page always seem to want to pin down a starting point for artistic activity in the belief that there is such a point in time and that it is relevant. Perhaps they carried out a survey or poll and discovered that youthful beginnings are a fundamental requirement of artistic appreciation. Or they could have watched any episode of AGT, IDOL or the VOICE to know that the second questions is always ‘how old are you?’ followed by a sharp intake of breath at the very young standing shellshocked on the stage or the very old trying to justify their existence with an outrageous performance. The octogenarian in fishnets singing AC/DC would qualify. Essentially, it’s the wrong question.

My most frequent response to the question of retirement is that it depends what they mean by retired. The idea that being an artist means engaging in meaningful work is still a foreign concept and having to make the money needed to be an artist automatically condemns the artist to some second rank behind those who manage to sell enough to make a living. When I reply and that I’ve been an artist all of my life, the look of understanding turns to one of confusion and inevitably some version of ‘it’s nice to have a hobby isn’t it’ ensues.

The first question though stems from an obsession with youth. One end of the art and music worlds is focused on artists who are twenty to thirty-five years of age which is ironic in itself. To have something meaningful to say is not a prerogative of youth and it is not uncommon for youthful promise to burn itself out prior to thirty after a few years of hype based upon the flashy and superficial– hence the 28 club or the endlessly-touring band still playing its meagre 60s back catalogue five decades after. Every artist is entitled to one winning idea but visual artists still producing variations of a winning formula after thirty may indicate a certain stylistic consistency or simply that they have run out of ideas. Starting a career after the age of official retirement though is looked upon as a transgression of the natural order – unless you are of course, Grandma Moses.

The 60s band The Animals are currently doing another lap of Australia playing to handfuls of people in small venues and working their back catalogue which was other people’s compositions in the first place. Robert Winslow Gordon was responsible for the first printed lyrics of House of the Rising Sun in 1925 when it was published in Adventure Magazine under ‘Old Songs Men Have Sung’ although it may in fact have been much older .The Animals heyday was long ago and they probably should have retired from touring by now but even when they garage the bus for the last time their music will still be played by certain radio stations. In essence The Animals will never be retired. The equivalent in visual art terms is the oft-published image of a ‘Mona Lisa’ moment. One image is selected to stand for a lifetime of creativity and art compendiums create a legacy of such images which defy time while pinning the artist to a specific time in history. At least Duchamp had the good grace to retire from art to play chess and forego the necessity to produce endless variations of repurposed sanitary ware. Others stuck it out for decades afterwards in the hope that time hadn’t caught up with them and that youthful energy might once again resurface as a ‘late’ period.

In the meantime, I get ever greyer, spend every waking moment producing art, exhibit where I can and await the next well-meaning art critic looking to guess my age.