Divine Genius, Subversive Hero, or Creative Entrepreneur? Exploring Various Facets of the Artist as a Mythical Figure

Abstract

People have always related art to the creation and transmission of myths. While myth as a theme in art has been thoroughly addressed, research about the “mythic” nature of the artist figure is far less common. The 20th and 21st centuries brought challenges to the status of art and artists in society, historically situated archetypes and stereotypes that we associate with the figure of the “artist” still survive to this day (e.g. “genius”, “subversive artists”, “child prodigy”, “eccentric”, etc.). In this paper, we set out to analyze various tropes used persistently to describe artists and explore how relevant the resulting myths are in (self) perceptions of Serbian contemporary artists. Our multidisciplinary approach to this topic combines a historical­theoretical and empirical perspective. Through historical research of the relevant literature, we described and mapped the key tropes of the (mythical) artist figure as it developed in Western culture. In the theoretical analysis we address the inseparability of digital culture with everyday life of people today, which we call postdigital. We explore how the transition into contemporaneity affects the determination of the “artist­figure”, i.e., how it impacts the contemporary process of myth­making. Following our historical­theoretical analysis, we conducted five in­depth interviews with contemporary Serbian artists to understand better how relevant the artist­ myth tropes are for their self­perception.