Over the years of editing the Greats issue, I’ve noticed something that all our honorees have in common. It’s not that they somehow shifted their artistic genre (though they did); it’s not that they managed to capture, or speak to, the culture of the moment (though they did that too) — it’s the equanimity with which they look back on their earliest creative efforts. Anyone who makes art of any kind has a work (or many works) from when they were just starting to think of themselves as an artist that makes them cringe, but the people we profile tend not to dwell on these nascent attempts. Why?
One could, of course, attribute this to arrogance, the belief that all their work was good, or at least meaningful. But I don’t think that’s it. I think they’ve all grown to realize that there is no good work, much less medium-busting work, without bad work; that failure, and lots of it, is essential to the creative process. I always say I appreciate and often admire a “swing and a miss” — a project in which an artist tries something big and even reckless. The fact that it’s unsuccessful isn’t the point; the point is that they tried in the first place. A spectacular miss is always more interesting than mere competence.
Dedicating yourself to taking chances is particularly difficult when you’ve had early success, as both the rapper Tyler, the Creator and the playwright David Henry Hwang did. At 34, Tyler is already 15 years into his steadily ascendant career; Hwang got produced at New York’s Public Theater at 22 and won a Tony for best play when he was only 30. For Glenn Close, taking chances has become a kind of artistic signature, over a five-decade career during which she’s played a dog-murdering villainess, a bunny boiler, a wife with a secret, a possessed grandmother, a grieving mother and an aging diva. I doubt that any of these artists would say they loved everything they made — I also doubt any of them would say they didn’t gain something from the experience.
Another thing I was struck by is how all three of them have built artistic communities that buffered them from when they were young. Tyler’s, a loose collection of actors, fellow musicians and designers, began coalescing when he was still in high school; Close and Hwang each found companionship in the theater. These bulwarks have, one imagines, allowed them to be adventurous: Close in the diversity of her roles; Hwang in the diversity of his projects (plays, films, musicals, operas); Tyler in the diversity of his extramusical pursuits (fashion design, acting).
All of them are hopeful. All of them are looking forward. All of them want to learn something new. Only the very few can make great art. But the rest of us can try to live like a great artist, for whom the pursuit, and the wonder, never ends.
Hanya Yanagihara is the editor in chief of T Magazine.
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