In 1922 in Prague, a mere two years before his untimely passing, Franz Kafka wrote a short story entitled “Ein Hungerkünstler” (“A Hunger Artist”). The story follows its protagonist, the hunger artist, from the height of his fame literally abstaining from nourishment for long stretches of time to the delight and awe of thousands who gather outside his cage to watch.
Eventually, the crowds lose interest, and he hires himself out to a circus hoping for a steady audience once more. However, he is largely unnoticed at first and ultimately forgotten until the circus practitioners decide to replace him with a panther. The story ends with his death-bed admission to the practitioners that he never deserved fame at all, because he hungered not by choice but only because he could not find any food he liked to eat.
The story has been explained away as allegorical, ironic, and simply surreal for the sake of surreality. Being in the art and design service industry and having recently read the story, I sympathize with the hunger artist. His perpetual striving for perfection (to a fault such as death) satirizes the very nature of the “starving artist” who stereotypically goes for long stretches of time in famine while producing his masterwork (often, and tragically, passing away before being recognized for his contribution).
Does this allegory resonate, however, with our understanding of the design professional of the twenty-first century? I heed the story as a cautionary tale while juggling numerous and complex design projects for separate clients in a variety of industries. Being obsessed with my own artistic abilities (and seeking an audience as my only reward) would not aid me in progressing from conceptual to production or development; conversely, it would cause me to stagnate and wither, and my observers (the clientele) would eventually become disillusioned and seek fulfillment elsewhere, much like Kafka’s hunger artist.
Such a sentiment may seem self-evident, but as most creatives know, it’s not easy to accept criticism from the spectators on the other side of the bars—all of whom have never “hungered” like we do daily. Not only is it absurd to continue performing our art for an audience of one, it’s also impossible to call ourselves designers sans observation, as even the hunger artist realizes in frustration as his audience dwindles. Design is a calculated artistic solution to a problem of creative significance; it is meant to exist and be seen so that visual errors cease to confound the masses. We must learn to perform our art in cooperative and collaborative ways with our clients and patrons so that we might identify ourselves as designers at all.
While it’s quite romantic to fancy ourselves hunger artists, it is Kafka—the artist himself—who paints this absurd picture for us lest we fall into the same trap. Hubris may still have its place within surrealist and abstract fine art circles, but it must not cloud the pragmatic sensibility of the modern designer.
In what ways are you a hunger artist? How do you interpret the need for perfection and admiration at seemingly nonsensical costs?
Comments