Must Art Be Serious?

I’m periodically struck by my work lacking a serious conceptual core.  It’s something I have started to consider throughout my MA journey as my motivation behind my art has been questioned, and it leaves me feeling lacking.  To be fair, it’s necessary to question my motivation for my learning, as it’s important to recognise what drives me to pursue my craft.  But is my sense of feeling lacking down to my own confidence, or is it an entrenched opinion proffered around in contemporary art?

Last week I saw a post by Lucy Baxendale, a ceramic artist I follow, questioning can art simply be made for fun.  To digress somewhat, I was fortunate enough to interview Baxendale for an academic assignment and found her to be very inciteful. Her comments on developing a style have stayed with me.  Through conversations in a working group, Baxendale recognised that no matter what media she works in, her style will always come through.  You can tweak aspects, but overwhelmingly the work will always be recognisable as your own.  Being from a mixed media background, this resonated and it has fed into my developing ethos on my own work.

Back to the point of this blog.  Baxendale posted on her Instagram page about a comment from a year ago where somebody at a fair stated, “you’re brave” (Baxendale, 2026).  She went on to contemplate whether this bravery was because her work was fun, dwelling on acceptance in the art world depending on one understanding the perceived language being used.  If you do you are ‘in’, if you don’t you are not.  She states, “What if making work anyone can connect with is what challenges the idea that art isn’t for everyone?” (Baxendale, 2026).  She wonders if this is the bravery that was being noted.

There followed many comments from other artists that were interesting and pertinent and made me think.  They had similar experiences to share regarding their own work.

I gather that my work should have a concept. A driving force behind it.  This concept needs to be displayed in an artist statement that accompanies my work at exhibitions, on my website, something I can vocalise when asked, and that people can connect with.  Said prose needs to be serious, professional and capturing to everyone from my friends reading it, to gallery owners, to potential purchasers, to social media followers, and to other artists.  It’s a tall order indeed.

Whilst I have come to recognise what my concept is, I feel it lacks seriousness.  I’ve moved emotionally over the last eighteen months of study, from imposter syndrome, to standing proud against just being myself.  The truth is, I have no option other than to just be me and try to find a way to describe my work because it’s expected of me.  I can chat all day with people about the world I have created around a dilapidated Victorian freakshow, but if you ask me to place this into contemporary ceramics in a professional artist blurb, then I just sound ridiculous at best and uncomfortably strange at worst.  There’s something about seeing it written down that provokes a shudder.

The truth is simple.  I don’t have any desire to challenge perceptions, promote health issues, or have hidden depths to my pieces.  I’m not fighting for the rights of minorities, nor am I championing the underdog.  I’m just having fun.  My drive is to amuse myself and those closest to me.  I create my characters based on my own deep-rooted interests and I make them into three-dimensional ceramic forms.  Amusement, humour, laughter, fun, all underpin my practice.

Oscar Wilde said, "Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious." (Wilde, 1894). How fitting in my case.

Yes, I am serious about having my own practice. I am a professional working woman in my fifties with a wealth of skills and a respectable career history under my belt.  I understand the need to fit into the new path I now choose to walk.  But I have never been conventional in anything I have done in life and not through design or rebellion, rather through my failure to understand the rules that govern us. Working as an artist who runs my own practice will see me bimbling my way through waters I find unnavigable, trying to understand what is expected of me and often failing.  I long since learned that I can only be myself and it will have to suffice. "Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist" is paraphrasing of Pablo Picasso (Goodreads, 2026).   Picasso was clearly more savvy on the bigger picture than I could ever hope to be.

The bigger picture here must surely be, must art be serious to be taken seriously?  We’ve all encountered the stuffy descriptions of art by those who take it very seriously indeed. There is a whole world of people out there who buy into the emperor’s new clothes school of thought.  If those deemed knowledgeable state something is good, then it must be so.  I encounter such art regularly in ceramics.  I see work displayed in galleries or at fairs for sale for large sums of money and I look at the piece and wonder what others are seeing that I am missing.  I’m all for embracing the subjectivity of art, and everyone taking pleasure in both making and buying, but sometimes, I just cannot marry up the adoration and price against the piece.

So, if a piece of ceramic art needs to have this depth, this concept, this meaning, then does it also need to be serious?  "A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art" (Cézanne, 2026).  For me, and obviously others too, the emotion they seek in their art is that of humour. 

I shall soon venture forth with my ceramic art into the public domain.  This will deliver opinions whether I invite them or not.  It will be interesting to find my audience, my community, my people. Those that enjoy fun in art and still take it seriously.  They are hopefully out there.  Maybe I’m about to join a small, quiet revolution challenging the traditional seriousness that is present in the art world.

References:

Baxendale, L. (2026) I’ve been thinking a lot recently about something someone said to me at a fair last year [Instagram]. 11 April 2026. Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/DW9oPu3DKrC/?img_index=1 (Accessed: 14 April 2026)

Wilde, O (1894) A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated Available at: https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/10/16/oscar-wilde-a-few-maxims-for-the-instruction-of-the-over-educated/#:~:text=Education%20is%20an%20admirable%20thing,the%20Criticism%20of%20the%20Journalist (Accessed: 14 April 2026)

Picasso, P () Pablo Picasso Quotes. Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/558213-learn-the-rules-like-a-pro-so-you-can-break (Accessed: 14 April 2026)

Cezanne, P () Paul Cezanne Quotes. Available at: https://www.paulcezanne.org/quotes.jsp#google_vignette (Accessed: 14 April 2026)