The Art of Business

My friend and I were discussing my insecurities about blogging. I explained that I feel self-indulgent in broadcasting my opinions. I want to write and enjoy blogging, but feel insecure at the same time. Who am I to think that my opinion counts, or is valid in concern to things that I really may know nothing about? There is an element of not wanting to offend anyone. Or worse, bore them.

We decided that any creative form of expression is essentially self-indulgent. To be an artist of any form, you must be confident that a.) your opinion matters and b.) that other people want or need it. I feel that I have the former, but am having a hard time validating the latter. When you really think about it, it is hard to believe your opinion matters if you don't know whether other people need it. The remedy, I suppose is to write for yourself and hopefully, others will find the validity in what you have to say.

The Marc Jacobs article in the June/July issue of Interview both addressed the insecurities of making the kind of art you want to make--and the forces that push against you when trying to do so, and elicited my anxieties towards commenting on someone that I do not know. In this position, I do not know any more about Marc Jacobs than what he has revealed publicly. Everything else is my interpretations of what he has said or done (or that which has been said about him).




There is a certain enigma surrounding the man that is Marc Jacobs, despite his being actually quite frank about his personal and professional life. I have loosely followed his physical transformation from slightly disheveled, bookish advocate of grunge and downtown aesthetics, to the blinged-out, overtly flamboyant, pectoral muscle-exposing exhibitionist.

For those like me who adored the previous incarnation, it is difficult to look at, and accept, this new persona. There have been a series of articles on him as of late so I think I am not alone in being slightly befuddled by his drastic re-invention. In last month's GQ he explained his new physique was attributed health issues that made him rethink the way he was leading his life and treating his body. He began working out and eating healthfully and became obsessed with the new lifestyle, and one would assume the results of his dedication.

One can understand his desire to be health-conscious. It is good to take better care of yourself. But is is hard to wrap your head around how someone can change so drastically. It may not be fair to judge, but it is a mystery to me how someone can do such a 180 and become something you thought they were themselves previously critical of.