Art is hard 

The creative process is, of course, not miraculous. (Although it might seem so to Axl.) The conventions and creative limitations that constitute an art form can be easily explained. Anyone with intelligence, as well as the discipline to apply himself for a good number of years to intense study, can gain a solid grounding for their practical application. Of course, from lack of talent, you may yet fail to make a masterpiece, but you will have gained an understanding of the process (and can be secure in the knowledge that you fulfil the minimum requirements for a job in A’n’R.)

   However, besides individual talent and diligence, the creation of enduring works of art also requires protracted cultural effort. While many masterpieces themselves may have taken almost no effort to create, the process that lead to their creation was invariably painstaking. For indeed: besides the artist’s talent and total command of the conventions of the art form, it also requires a strong tradition to bring forth great art: only the strictest adherence, over the course of many generations, to a set of aesthetic rules creates conditions favourable to the genesis of a masterpiece.   

Art is (among other things) a highly refined form of communication, and wherever people communicate, a set of rules is in operation to ensure that all individuals understand each other. When generations of artists all adhere to the same set of sometimes quite arbitrary basic rules, the public gradually becomes attuned to increasingly complex handling of motifs. Only by virtue of rules are artists able to carry their aesthetic principles and the audience’s appreciation of them along to ever-greater levels of sophistication.  Not taking anything away from Homer’s personal achievement, it is not unreasonable to say that the Iliad, one of the most enduring works of art ever, was a few thousand years in the making. The first man to hum a tune did not hum Beethoven’s Ninth. Many generations of artists labouring in the field of music paved the way for one man of genius to ride the crest of their efforts and create a timeless masterpiece. No artist has ever made a masterpiece alone, by accident. His position in the chain of refinement crucial, that is to say, his time and place of birth are every bit as important as his innate talent and the rigours of his musical education.  

In a sense, a masterpiece is a kind of greatest hits collection: all the best bits from one art form drawn together into one supreme artistic statement, by a single genius artist. A great artist knows how to use for his own benefit the accomplishments of the good artists that went before him. (On a (very) small scale we witness this process in action in modern pop music, where a hit song is usually fashioned out of the most elegant characteristics of two or more musical styles: from ‘I Get Around’ to ‘Roxanne’ to ‘Man, I Feel Like A Woman,’ careful examination of a hit song’s stylistics usually turns up a cross-over or two.)   

The modern day liberal view that Mozart achieved greatness because he was a rebel and broke rules is indicative of our age’s deep-seated disdain for rules in general, and is as such highly destructive, since it engenders the attitude among aspiring artists that it is no longer necessary to become familiar with the rules at all to achieve greatness. Mozart was not born as a rule breaker: as a child prodigy he assimilated the extent of his predecessors’ achievements, which allowed him, as an adult, to become the crowning glory of their musical tradition.  Through single-minded devotion to his art at the expense of all other pursuits, an artist attains naturally to a greater understanding of his field of excellence than his audience, and is constantly at risk of rushing too far ahead. Not every artist sees it as his sacred duty to communicate with his contemporaries, but he who expresses obscurities to cover up a lack of basic training is no artist.