The Cost of Conformity

Ronald Gittins died in 2019 leaving behind a large collection of artworks. Five years on, his home where the work was displayed and stored has been Grade II listed.


Mr Gittins lived in a rented flat in Birkenhead where, extraordinarily, the landlord and agents left him alone for 30 years. He let very few people into his home for obvious reasons, but enough of the right kind of people who were in the right place at the right time realised that something exceptional had been created, bought the flat, spoke to the right organisations and preserved his work.


Who knows how Mr Gittins spent his youth and adulthood, how he paid the rent and so on, but there’s something very familiar about his story. He “was a complicated character who most people would have regarded as eccentric.” People like Ron aren’t easy to live with, many of them find it hard to live with themselves, they’re driven to produce, choice doesn't have much to do with it. Very, very few create work that the market wants but that’s not the issue for them, many artists are disinterested in selling their stuff. 


Art is one of the things that make Homo sapiens different from any other animal. The earliest art, accurate, beautiful representations of animals, prints and stencils of human hands, is deep inside caves, intimately linked to religion and organised culture. Nothing exists that doesn’t serve survival in some way so we have to suppose that art, which has been in existence for as long as we have, is necessary. 


I’ve no idea how Mr Gittins lived but he was old enough to have found some support from the State before the benefits system became a sadistic parody of itself. From the 60’s to the mid-90’s it served as a kind of universal basic income for many (mainly white) creatives and large numbers of now successful, then low income writers,  artists and musicians were able to hone their skills because they had the freedom of time. 


A great many people are not allowed to develop their natural creativity for a multitude of reasons. Their family might need them to find ‘respectable’ work, either to pay bills or to maintain a particular appearance. They may be part of a culture that ridicules or reviles these drives - Banksy was a criminal until his art achieved high monetary value. We’re taught that anything we produce is worthless until it becomes not just saleable but profitable and that lesson has profound impact when you need to feed you children.


The results of forcing people to behave in ways that are unnatural to them are evident all around us. Those who need to numb themselves in all kinds of ways, or who simply can’t adjust and find themselves coming into contact with the criminal justice or mental health systems are the tip of the iceberg. Disappointed, embittered, frustrated, resentful people leading lives they’re unsuited to, abusing any power they get, despising those who aren’t like them - all of us come into contact with them every single day. And there are parts of all of us that, in a context that we’re enduringly unsuited to, are irritable, petulant, punishing, much less functional. Projective Identification is the idea that we perceive in others the things we find unbearable in ourselves, and it contaminates everyone that comes into contact with it.

You don’t have to be an artist or writer to feel this, if you’re in any life that you’re not suited to it's going to be harder than if you felt that your life belonged to you. That can be harder to discern than you may imagine. If the expectations of your family and school have been attached to a certain kind of life then doing anything different is going to be tougher than it should be. A natural maths genius unable to express themselves as, say, a doctor's receptionist, or a barrister who’s much more suited to care work can have long and successful careers but they may be less likely to feel fulfilled. That can have an impact on their relationships, including those with their children.


There’s no easy answer to this. Mr Gittins was supremely lucky, many stars constellated to allow him a life that was productive and meaningful on his terms (Where ‘productivity’ means doing more with less, people like Mr Gittins are often highly generative while very privileged people whose connections allow them to do more than their talent endorses are often celebrated for very mediocre work.) Sometimes we have to conform, learn our trade, earn the money, pay the bills, gain the required security and then, having proved that it can be done and gained some space from economic or cultural pressures, we can pause. 

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Having the time to wonder why we’re doing what we’re doing has become a luxury. 17,000 years on from Lascaux, you’ve got to wonder how that happened.