When El Fary appeared on television, my grandmother used to say: “That man is a great artist.” I will not deny this character his talents — who lacks them entirely? — but what interests me here is the heterogeneity of the contexts in which the label artist gets applied. El Fary is one, of course, and so is every imaginable Spanish folclórica and folclórico — the female and male performers of popular song. So is anyone who sings, plays, paints, writes, sculpts, dances, composes, designs, and so on, and who has notched up a minimum of achievements — having exhibited at the village town hall, for instance, and sold three or four canvases. With that you will already be earnestly called an artist. The folksy expression “you are an artist” is bestowed on anyone who, in their leisure time, devotes a little while to creativity. You bake a more-or-less tasty sponge cake? You are an artist. You sketch a caricature of your cousin? You are an artist. You make a vase because you signed up for a pottery class? You are an artist. You darn a sock? You are an artist. You wallpaper a room without leaving lines between the strips? You are an artist. And so on.
But everyone knows that there are artists and there are artists. El Fary is not the same as Mozart, and the painter from your village is not Goya. Between them stretches a ladder of confused rungs, and very often, rather than climbing, you are pushed up. That is what critics and marketing are for — in short, the culture business and the leisure industry, which puts everything up for sale on the same level: that of profitability. At the very top, however, stands the genius, because all those who are at the top, those who triumph, are geniuses. And the genius, if incapable of holding himself up by his own works, is held up by all the pyrotechnics of the corresponding spectacle. It does not matter that the business is short-lived: posterity is another convenient myth, if you know how to make use of it. Although the abuse of the term genius forces other paths to be opened. So it is with the success of every well-promoted artist who, the moment they are born, by the mere fact of being exposed to a large audience, has already triumphed. That is to say: first they triumph, and then, if it so happens, they release a record or whatever it may be.
This crude idea of the genius — a caricature of the Romantic genius, which, ideal and fanciful as it was, at least had its grandeur — has shaped the collective imagination to such a degree that it is now possible to pass off any old puppet as an outstanding being. In the art of stages, galas, and music videos, the fetish is the puppet. These are the references many people have in mind when they say, or think, or feel, the words “I want to be an artist.” There is no need, obviously, to become a genius. It is enough to be an artist — that is, to look like one. Because the figure on the pulpit, shouting above the heads of the crowd and moving in accordance with the corresponding folkloric customs, plays the role of the artist. (Yes, I am claiming that a rapper or a rocker, among many others, are also folclóricos, and that their paraphernalia is an ethnic staging comparable to that of any tribe studied by anthropologists, except inserted into a very different social context.)
More interesting are those other reference figures whose artist-status is measured by an aura of intellectuality: the writer, the poet, the contemporary artist, the famous academic, the film director, the stage actor — even when he makes films “to put bread on the table” — and so on. All of them figures who give book launches and sign copies, who do serious interviews, who are the object of analyses by critics writing in the supplements, or by some YouTuber with a budget; who receive prizes and give speeches; who produce cult works. When an aspiring writer, for example, self-publishes their book and sells it on one of those speculative online retail platforms, they are seeking to emulate these prestige roles. In the end, what matters — more than the book itself, because anyone can write a novel or a self-help book — is appearing before the readers, having a few photos posted with your book on the social media accounts you keep updating with the events on your artist’s calendar, sitting at a stall at some book fair, and signing at least a couple of copies (even if only for a relative and a school friend). With proper modesty, the would-be writer will say: “It’s not much, but here I am.” And here can be anyone, provided they pay the cost of the services offered by self-publishing companies, or are a little bit handy with the tools. After all, if it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. If you have published a book, presented it however modestly, displayed it on social media, and signed a few copies, you are a writer — even if only partially, like those polymath celebrities who are “writer, model, actress, jewellery designer, influencer, and chef.” The book itself does not matter. If we ask the hordes of writers who, edited or self-edited, flood the market whether their works have anything to say or to offer beyond their personal satisfaction, they will say yes, or almost, or “well, my voice is modest, but I do my little bit…” — your little bit to what? Who has anything to say, anything really to say? On the other hand, I do not mean to suggest that to be a writer one must pass through the selective filter of a publishing house. Such companies generally differ from self-publishers in that they cover the cost themselves, trusting that the author’s name will be enough to sell large quantities. And that is why what they care about, above all else, is the fame of that author — someone who already carries an aura luminous enough that, with a little publicity, they can be easily transformed into an artist. The conclusion is the same: to be an artist is to look like one, and looking like one is exhausted in the persona.