The contemporary creator walks on a fragmented landscape of three qualities that seem incompatible: those of the Amateur, the Artist, and the Professional. Each projects a different identity, a different justification, and a different destination. Their clash is not merely philosophical; it is the central agony of our cultural position and stance.
The amateur, as the primordial lover of art—the "amātor” ("lover")—is the birth of our creator. It was that primal connection with eros and passion for the process as an end in itself. We started with the "I feel," the "I discover," the "transformation"—where our love for what we experienced through the creative process could not be separated from our "breath." Our "work" at this stage was an emanation of a "vital need," not a "product." Everything began in a "sacred lab" that surpassed our "logic" and our "intent" to dominate or direct creation. Everything "happened" as if we were "holy vessels" of a sacred rite existing both beyond us and within us. The challenge was whether we would dare to share this creation with others or remain in the safe space of the private.
Thus, we moved to a new critical choice. To share this creative need and function with others and to join what is called artistry as an identity, in order to converse and communicate with others using creation as our vehicle. Art became the way and the space for our personal and universal expression. Now our new questions were: "What am I saying" with what I create, "What does this concern, for me and for others," "How does it provoke, move, change" the world around me through my truth and the truth I discover and share? The creative work became the end goal of bridging our inner world with the broader social world. The authenticity of our truth demanded a social negotiation in the need for collective communication. And here we faced our first great challenge: the passage from the personal to the collective. The delicate balance of expression between our lacks and our excesses: "art for art’s sake" or "art for a purpose."?
And so, we arrived at professionalism. At the creative work as a tool. We committed in a new way in terms of efficiency and protocols. And it was there, exactly there, that we compressed primordial love into a commodity for transaction. The initial "amateur" who became an "artist" is transformed into a professional - the producer. The love for the process developed a devotion of time in order to grow, only to ultimately succumb to its self-definition or hetero-definition in terms of the "market", and to be thunderously defeated. The professional of the market will be forced either to scorn or to submit to the occasional external demand. Their art will endure immense pressures to be standardized into whatever content (branding), and its value will have whatever "price." The internal "amateur" will lose its innocence, the artist their inner compass, and the professional, under the pressure of competition and survival, will dominate according to the law of "your death is my life."
The challenge here is not whether we choose black or white but how to become the guardian and observer of an endless redefinition of a conscious journey. The contemporary artist is called to either seek or shape the conditions that will allow them to continually return to the core of the "amateur," to the primary spark of their relationship with their purpose.
First pole: Discipline towards the purpose. The artist is not a machine. Their productivity is measured not by quantity but by quality. They have an absolute need for space and time for inspiration and creation, without any pressure or exposure to criticism or the demands of the market.
Second pole: Economic self-sufficiency and independence. The artist who can secure their survival from other sources of income is truly free. They are the ones who can say "no" to proposals that buy out the "soul" of their creativity and the freedom that enriches and multiplies it.
Third pole: Technical evolution as freedom. When the artist stops training and evolving, continuously broadening their horizons, but instead barricades themselves in the self-sufficiency of their acquired skills and "achievements," they atrophy—whether they admit it or not. Creativity presupposes continuous refeeding and a constant inoculation with the new. It is as if we once had a computer with a current software, and while technology advances, we stay behind. The artist needs constant updates... this fosters creativity and their realignment with research, experimentation, risk, and a renewed expression. Renewed techniques also refresh our primary connection with the Socratic "All I know is that I know nothing" and therefore with the pure search and unconditional love for the process of the "amateur."
In conclusion, the artist does not mature when they abandon the amateur within them. They mature when they learn to protect them, nourish them, and invoke them as the deepest source of their truth.
In our time, the great struggle is not to create a masterpiece. The great struggle is to not let yourself be turned into a product. The great struggle is to demystify the linear narrative of "professional ascent," to redefine our professionalism as a servant, not a master, of creation, and to honor the amateur within us not as an immature stage, but as the unique core that can save our art from commodification.
The contemporary artist is the one who uses all their means for a single purpose: to maintain the right, the opportunity, and the courage to never be a mere "professional" when it comes to the heart of their work.
The final work, then, will not simply be an object in the general market. It will be the bridging of a cycle: it will bear the elements of the Amateur (the purity and the process), the Artist (the expression and the depth), and the Professional (the completion and reliability). It will not be a product. It will be a way of living.
