Autistic persona

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I have been talking to gallery owners and other people in the art community because I want to retire and spend the rest of my days doing artwork. The one consistent thing that keeps coming up is that that people buy the artist more than the art. This is such a big factor that successful artists often adopt a persona, dressing flamboyantly, larger than life personalities, various other things that make the artist literally part of the show. You need to hang out, do the wine and cheese receptions, make people like you as much as your art. This is critical because there is TONS of good artwork out there. Technically and artistically proficient artists are all over the place. The only thing that really sets you apart is YOU.

I see a problem with this. I have no clue how to create and maintain any persona, and I also hate "faking it", which is really what such a persona is.

On the flip side, all of my efforts to be "normal" really are nothing more than a persona created to allow me some acceptable level of interaction with the NT world. So in a way, I'm faking it all the time.

The irony is that I'm beginning to think this "artistic personality" that I'm supposed to create and wear at public events should be me just being autistic with any editing of my behavior. But that feels disingenuous and false. Almost like I am using autism to get something, whoring myself to make myself artistically interesting.

It would be so easy to appear more autistic. Like a flaming gay queen going over the top with all the gay cliches it would be easy to let stims be obvious, zone out in conversations, etc. And working at appearing to be more autistic than I really am (it's not always obvious) seems like a slap in the face of those on the spectrum that really have to work hard at just getting through basic daily tasks.

Another interesting thing is that when I am around art and getting into my special interest mode, I automatically become less cognizant of my behavior and start stimming more anyway. When I'm studying another's work I hyper focus, wring my hands, rock back and forth, get the "autistic 10,000 yard stare".

I just really hate being fake. I've seen artists that do the whole "look at me ... I'm a troubled artist" routine, wearing black, acting like the world should be pissed on, treating people like crap in the name of their art. I've met several other such "personalities". I always scratch my head and think WTF?

It would be highly ironic that the thing that has prevented any real success in life becomes how I must "act" to sell my art.

Thoughts?

Hmmm. That's really interesting. I didn't know that that's the way the art world was, but it makes loads of sense now.

This is a very interesting piece that you wrote. I think the best way to look at this is realize that you are selling a product. What does it take to sell the product. Don't see it as selling yourself. See it as doing what you need to do to be a good salesman. Do you believe in your artwork? If you do, then you should do what you feel is in the best interest to guarantee artistic success. At least, I feel this way because if you truly believe in your art, then others should as well.

Also, some of those other artists might not be faking their personalities. You are assuming they are wearing a mask. But, if you take on a persona for long enough, you soon become that person. At least, that is my observations within myself whenever I've wanted to adopt a certain habit.

Another predictably long response, bolded the important parts (didn't bold the links but they're important too)

You might want to see how other autistic artists do things.

You could look up (these are links):

Donna Williams
Larry Bissonnette, also here
Katie Miller, also here
Stephen Wiltshire
Gilles Tréhin
Christophe Pillault
Dora Raymaker
Peter Myers
Jonathan Lerman, also here
Sharleene Hurst
Daniel Muller
George Widener
Gregory Blackstock
Jessica Park
Peter Howson (at least I read he was autistic)
Kim Miller (wow, talk about puzzle pieces, she made a puzzle mask)
Barbara Moran
A whole lot of artists
Victoria Wright (photo on that page is slideshow changing between pictures)
Trent Altman
Susan King, also
here
Meghan Burnside, also here


Note that these range from child-diagnosed to adult-diagnosed (to child-diagnosed then forgotten then adult-diagnosed later) and from almost totally passing for nonautistic, to never in a million years would pass. And from untrained to those who went to art school (yet still may be unable to escape the "outsider artist" label because they're autistic, even though "outsider artists" are supposed to be people who didn't go to art college, mind you as someone that term's applied to I have mixed feelings about it). Also some who were untrained artists who were very skilled (even "savant artists") already and went on to trained later, like Stephen Wiltshire. So experiences will be different.

I really liked the way Katie appeared when I met her -- cheerfully eccentric, with paintbrushes in her hair. And Larry has this amazing ability to be exactly who he is and take no crap from anyone for any reason, that I wish I could learn from some more (I think I'm more self-conscious). He goes to the same art program I do, which is for self-taught artists with developmental disabilities.

My favorite artist in the list above is Christophe Pillault. He paints much like I perceive the world. Some of the others do too, ilke Donna Williams at least sometimes.

You'll find if you read through all those that there are a lot of themes that crop up over and over again. There's a whole lot of things that make me uncomfortable. There's a lot of… like making autistic people exotic. And while I don't mind being an autistic artist, the problem to me is when people make the AUTISTIC in huge letters and the artist in tiny ones. And then trot out bunches of clichés (some specific to autism, some disability-oriented). Like… "autistic artist gives insight into her mysterious world", that kind of thing.

Plus it's hard to tell if people really like your art or if they're just saying it because they don't think someone like you could create real art. At the art program I go to (there's no teaching, they just provide materials) I'll be starting off a painting, just doing the background, which is just various splotches of between two and four colors. Nothing exciting, nothing interesting. And people will ooh and ash about how beautiful it is. And it makes me want to growl at them but I mostly don't. Because when I finish a painting it's going to look like this:



And to have them giving me these profuse compliments about a color you can barely see by the end if you can see it at all just… they don't even mean it, they just want to give me a compliment because they've been told to encourage me or something. (As if their encouragement fuels my creativity or something. No, it often does the opposite. It's a good thing my creative drive is so strong.) Like I'm betting that teeny little piece of yellow at the upper left corner of that painting is the only piece showing of the yellow blobs they were complimenting me on. And that may not even be the bottom, it may be one layer above the bottom. But you get the idea.

That's what being an AUTISTIC (huge letters) artist (little letters) gets a person. That and hearing words like "inspirational", "special", "overcoming", "amazing", "lets us into her world", "communicates through painting", etc. all the time whether they apply or not.

As for dropping a facade, never let anyone tell you that it's bad or wrong. Anyone who tells you that is just not worth listening to because they Don't Get It on a really fundamental level (and often have their own motives and agendas clouding the issue). Letting yourself do the things you've always hidden is not wrong. It can even be a good thing.

Besides the stuff described in this thread, it can sometimes even allow you to function in ways that are harder to do when you're keeping up an act. I remember once being in a restaurant with a woman who sees herself as straddling the border between autistic and nonautistic but has far worse sensory issues than many people I know who are actually diagnosed and had rocked in childhood and later suppressed it and a lot of other things that pointed to not just being on the border. She was totally not handling the noise well and looked like she was about to either have a meltdown or run outside. It was like pulling teeth to persuade her to rock, but once she did, she could enjoy her meal and even hold a conversation. But she also seemed really embarrassed to do it, even though it's something she'd done for a large portion of her childhood. (And even though rocking is far from exclusive to autistic people.)

I've met people who think dropping such masks is an insult to autistic people who Really Struggle To Do Such-And-Such. Usually they're really unhappy people with some sort of complex going on in their heads (which often hinges on them having a strict dividing line between people like them and "people without real problems"). They're not people I'd ever take advice from. I look at it this way: They would rather that other people stay massively uncomfortable and less able to function as themselves, just so that they can maintain their own ideas of who is and isn't a Real Autistic Person. That seems incredibly selfish to me. And that kind of person can get very irate, sometimes even vicious, but it doesn't mean they're worth listening to. In fact the viciousness should be a clue they ought not to be listened to.

When I see people acting like they own some kind of corner on autistic behavior that's only available to People Who Are Severely Impaired or something, I just ignore them (unless I want to tell others they're full of it). Because I know, from having known a whole lot of people who've suppressed their real responses for decades, what kind of hell people go through in order to do that. And even the ones who can manage it without going through hell, have a perfect right to be themselves at any time. People who want to play Autism Police or Stim Police have problems. Don't make their problems yours, no matter how severely impaired they are or claim to be. That doesn't give them authority over the way you relate to your body.

Thanks, Anbuend.

You always have a way of posting things that cut through the crap right to the heart of things. I love it. I'll have to re-read this a few times and follow your links. I'm sure it will be helpful.

Thank you. I really try at that.

I guess... at some point I realized that I do not learn well outside of certain (clear but ever-changing) boundaries inside my head. That all I accomplished when I allowed myself out of bounds, was getting whisked off my feet by a whirlwind of ideas that I could not process, then landing on the ground hard afterwards with a headache and a very muzzy brain.

So I tried allowing myself to learn things my way, and everything changed. I keep my feet on the ground and that helps me in situations where other people are trying with all their might to pull me into the air. I don't know a good non-metaphorical way to say this so I hope it makes sense. I now -- except when I slip up -- refuse to be drawn in to interactions that try to put distance between the ground and my feet.

Mind you, I don't claim to be always right or that everything outside the shifting boundaries of my territory is useless. This is just the way I have personally learned to deal with things in general. It works for me. And I think it helps me cut through BS sometimes when in the past I would have gotten whisked away by it.

Where is the LIKE button....

I <3 Anbuend

For some unknown reason the world's definition of what is 'special' keeps appearing as though it is what is most important. The real story here is how you found a place in this world and a place where you found a way to exist. The day in and day out story of you; from birth on. I understand having an 'art' but exactly what role has that played in your 'successful' life up to this point? How has it kept you alive? How can you see it to rescue you from a boring job? How could you not protect it with your life? Whatever the world gets a hold of it exploits and twists and turns into something it needs to fulfill its own needs. What has your art brought you in your life? Is it your peace, your escape, your pleasure, your sanctuary from this day to day struggle to live this life? I think if you convince yourself it will become the way to finance your life the peaceful will be destroyed. Don't listen to the messages and use the same approach to something you hold close to you and throw it in the lions den. The lions will rip it apart, it is in their very nature.

You were right when you said you already know about faking it. If you can pass, you can create a persona. Another problem is that stage personas have a way of eating real personalities.