Max Shertz said: You have to be selfish if you want to be an artist
This statement was received with very mixed feelings. To be selfish is frowned upon and rightly so. However, it means something else when you are an artist, composer, or writer, etc.
First of all, to be a serious artist, you need to put your art first before anything else. When I say “serious artist”, I am talking about being a “creator”, that is, creator of art, or music, literature, etc. You have to be obsessed with your art. The first ingredient is “desire”. Yes, I desire to do art more than anything else. You need to be passionate about it. I love to do art. Passion is coupled with energy. Without passion, there is no energy. You can’t create without energy because it takes a lot of energy to create. So you have all those ingredients necessary - desire, passion, energy.
Then, as art is a “calling”, like any calling, it comes first. It comes first because you are going to want to create most of the time at the exclusion of everything else and if you truly want to create you have to spend much time doing it so that you can always stay into the flow of your creative process and not be interrupted constantly by other priorities. You just can’t compromise.
So, as a woman, I always said to other women aspiring to be artists - if you want to be an artist, think first. Understand that housework, husband, children, might come second to your art. How are you going to balance that? Maybe you should not get married or have children - but if you do so, you are going to need a lot of support with someone helping you with your domestic life and/or financially. You can’t just stop a painting you are in the process of creating to go and make dinner for the family. You can say that you will come back to it later but the moment might be gone. Frankly, I always felt that artists should not have children. They are too selfish to be good husbands/wives or good parents. I am sure there are exceptions but being an artist and having a family don’t seem to go well together.
As for Max Shertz, my husband, he chose to be selfish. He did his life as he was the center of the universe and if you did not like it, it was better to move on somewhere else. He had children but when he devoted his life full-time to his art, his children were secondary. Not that he was not good with them. In fact he was very good with his children until they became teenagers (and that is another story), but if he had to choose to paint rather than taking his children for an outing, he would choose to paint. He entertained a lot of people and entertaining those people with his art and him painting came first. Not that he did nothing with his children - he did, but on his own time, which translated to “I, Max Shertz, come first.” The fact is that when you put your art first before family, then you end up putting yourself first in every situation. This attitude can be detrimental in a family situation. That is why it is important to decide if you are going to have both, a family and your art, or either one.
Now, as a woman who wanted to become an artist, how did I handle this situation with Max, my husband/teacher/artist. I felt very privileged to be Max’ student, living with him and his family. I was constantly involved with doing art with Max, first as his student, and then as his companion in art. Some people said that my work showed how much I was influenced by Max Shertz - they were saying this as a negative - but I never saw it as a negative. I had to decide if I was going to stay with Max, living with him, and painting with him, as well as going to my full-time job, or deciding after I studied with Max, to leave. Now, I have always been a realist. Max was certainly a better artist than I was, genius-like when it came to his abstracts, paintings from the “Unconscious”, starting in the early 90’s. So I decided that it was better for me to stay with Max rather than go out in the world and be just another talented artist. Now, I was doing what I loved. I was painting, not full-time, because of my job and my responsibilities as a mother later on, but I was painting having Max as my audience, which was all that I needed really. He was always extremely supportive of my work, always guided me when necessary, always pushed me to expand myself and grow, and was the best critic. It was enough for me. It would have been like a tennis player having the opportunity to play tennis with one of the best tennis players there is - and to do it every day. I also did not want to end up as Camille Claudel. As you may remember, Camille Claudel was the mistress of Rodin, the French sculptor and she was a sculptor herself. She was Rodin’s student, then his mistress, then she worked with him on various sculptures. However, she wanted more. Rodin lived with his common-law wife and the child he had with her. Claudel wanted Rodin to leave his common-law wife and his child. Rodin had a 20 year relationship with his common-law wife, a woman who took care of him, his household and their child and that woman was not an artist - so no conflicts with him as an artist as well. It was a good situation for him. Yes, he was selfish. He took care of himself as an artist first. Now, I know it was a difficult time for a woman then. To be an artist, not be married - being his mistress - not an easy situation. Claudel gave Rodin an ultimatum - to leave his common-law wife so that they live together, maybe get married. He refused. She left Rodin and descended into madness. As a female artist, she was already very isolated (after all it was the late 1800’s) and she never stopped loving Rodin which caused her much emotional distress. So, I did not want to end up like Camille Claudel because I knew that at that point I could not live without Max Shertz.
The good thing with Max is that he had no hidden agenda. He said he was selfish and that he decided to be selfish and that his art would come first and, of course, he would come first in the process, and as everything he did in life, he laid the cards on the table - it was like, you join me but this is the deal - if it is not at your liking, the door is wide open. And certainly if you read the lives of many artists, writers and composers, they all had to make that choice - to be selfish.
Written by Christiane Shertz - March 2017