Tradition vs. Inspiration

One opposition with which artists always grapple, onto which great artists have transferred their life, is the use of tradition vs. inspiration. How does she balance the past, someone else’s ideas and identity, with her own, which she probably doesn’t even know yet? Does she want to incorporate it completely into herself? Does she want to abandon the past and listen only to her own voice? Is that voice her own? How does she know?

The conversation with her artistic precursors begins where the conversation left off; that is, she begins with the kind of thinking about oppositions that she has acquired. In the process of working, tradition and inspiration find a way of talking with each other.

A woman’s most fundamental struggle with her father is to own herself, just as the woman artist’s is with tradition. Until she reclaims her territory, a woman slowly loses her will to be the mistress of her self. Without an independent voice there is no counterpoint.

Yet tradition, however it has subjected the woman artist, is still her tradition. The artist cannot live without that conversation. What does she do with it? She talks with it, she loves it, she invents what it means to be human, she fills in the gaps until that tradition becomes fit to be her husband. Her conversation between tradition and inspiration will be an act of invention and reconciliation. In the language of counterpoint, she composes her own melody, one that plays with and against her precursor. It turns out that the masculine can amuse as well as the feminine.