NOBODY ASKED YOU TO UNDERSTAND ART. IT UNDERSTANDS YOU.

Great artists paint what they see. If you don't get it, they don't care. An artist doesn't paint for you or because they like to, but because they have no choice. Nobody decides they want to be an artist, they just are. Their art picks them, not the other way around. If a lot of them seem driven and tortured, well, that's the nature of great art. The privilege of being given the gift of creation comes at a very high price. It can be a tortuous existence but they do it anyway, with all their heart and soul and all the skills at their command, no matter what the personal cost. Each finished work of art is another nail in an artist's coffin. All the more reason to appreciate the joy and beauty they give us.

Which is not to say that every painter is a great artist, any more than every ham on a silly situation comedy is a great actor, or that Adam Sandler or Jim Carey are comic geniuses. They're not. Or at least not yet. Artists of any discipline may surprise themselves and the public by getting honest someday, one of the keys to greatness. A great artist panders to no one. It just doesn't occur to them. Which probably explains why there is so little greatness in popular and profit-driven mediums like television and movies. It's no wonder that great actors jump at the chance to film great scripts. They are rare. Very few movie projects are made just for the sake of the story and very few directors have the status to be left alone to tell that story in the way that they see fit. There are some, and their movies are generally superior.

But superior art doesn't always translate into profits. For every Pablo Picasso who made a fortune painting whatever he felt like painting, there are a hundred Vincent Van Goghs living tortured lives and dying in poverty. That's the deal with great artists, and they know it. Doesn't stop a single one of them from pouring their life's blood into their art and leaving the rest of us with an amazing body of work, and their great insight and understanding of humanity. And themselves being only human, of course they hope for money and recognition. That's only natural, but they never alter their work to suit popular tastes, hoping that the world will catch up to them before they die.

That never happens for most of them, but eventually the world does catch up and their genius is celebrated and collectors make millions off their work. But that's irrelevant. It is the world at large who benefits the most, learning some new insight an artist shows us and basking in the monumental beauty and talent given to us by these people. We get to walk away with a new way of looking at things, an incredible gift from the artist to the world. So let's not be stingy with our government endowments for the arts. They are well worth the investment. We need them more than they need us. Someday, somewhere, the results of an artist's efforts will stun you and make you a better and wiser person.