Fame or Anonymity?
Andy Warhol famously said "In the future, everyone will
be world-famous for 15 minutes", to which Banksy has responded "In
the future, everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes."
Fame and anonymity are two opposing aspirations, examples of
which are found in the long history of creativity.
We live in an Age of Celebrity with photo ops, paparazzi,
internet, fan mail, brand ambassadors and book signing, creating opportunities
for those who seek fame or who have fame - or infamy - imposed upon them.
At the other end of the spectrum is what Tom Geue calls the
“Technology of Absence” – the desire for anonymity. The identity of Protest
graffiti artists is hidden as is that of cybercriminals, and users of the Dark Web. Technological innovation is
often developed by teams and the product is known by the company they work for
rather than the inventors, who remain anonymous to the public.
We rarely know the names of the designers of historical palaces
mosques, temples, and churches that inspired many architects. The authorship of
some influential literary and art works have been lost in time such as the
Epics of Gilgamesh or Beowulf, I Ching
or One Thousand and One Nights. Some authorships are disputed such as
the controversy about who wrote the plays ascribed to Shakespeare. This was a
manner of Chinese whispers originating in 1785 by scholar James Wilmott who
could not reconcile the very ordinary life of Shakespeare with the
extraordinary works he wrote.
Paintings and sculptures by unknown artists may be known
simply by a place, style or subject – Master of Delft, Master of the
Embroidered Foliage. While the value of an art work increases when the artists
is known, the value of novels by anonymous authors is based on sales. The real name of the hugely successful contemporary Italian
author, Elena Ferrante, remains a mystery as does the creator of bitcoin known only as Satoshi
Nakamoto.
Many creative
people enjoyed fame in their lifetime:
writers Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemmingway, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, artists
Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Sadeqain, movie and pop stars. Others
achieved fame posthumously Van Gogh, Franz Kafka, Oscar Wilde, Johann Sebastian
Bach, Vermeer, Anne Frank.
Some authors initially used pseudonyms to hide their true
identity – Johnathan Swift, Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austin, the Bronte Sisters. Ahmed
Nadeem Qasmi used the name Panj-darya and Anga., for his columns. Mushfiq Khwaja used Khamabagosh. Others are
known only by their pseudonyms – George Elliot, Lewis Carroll, Henrik Ibsen,
Moliere, Tristan Tzara, Voltaire. Closer to home we have Ibne Insha, Munshi
Premchand, Shaukat Thanvi and Ibne Safi.
The Takhalus
or pen name used by all poets
writing in Urdu, a word derived from Arabic, meaning to get liberated or
become secure, reflects a creative self-identity
–closer to fame than anonymity.
Virginia Woolf believed anonymity allowed creativity to
emerge from the core of the being. E.M.
Forster wrote in “Anonymity: An Enquiry” that “all literature tends towards a
condition of anonymity . . . The poet wrote the poem no doubt, but he forgot
himself while he wrote it, and we forget him while we read”. Anonymity is
believed to have a healing power. It frees
the author from the expectations of his or her readership, and allows quiet space
for experimentation.
Anonymity as a
cloak of invisibility also protects the dissident from persecution, allowing
important aspects of protest to reach the public. Journalists protect their
sources, but E.M Forster also asks the questions of newspapers: “Who gives us this information upon which
our judgments depend, and which must ultimately influence our characters ?”
Ted Gioia in his article “Banksy, Daft Punk, Elena Ferrante:
The New Cult of the Anonymous Artist”, claims anonymity is becoming the new
status symbol – more hip and more trustworthy as it steps away from the
narcissism of fame.
Durriya Kazi
July 21, 2019
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