Why do you think so few artists attempt to create a magnum opus? It really seems most people who are good at something want to just keep making it in various forms, but don't try to make a single lasting great work, even when they're in a position to try.
As an example of what I mean, take Virgil who became well known for pastoral writing, but always had an eye on writing a national epic. A few people still read Georgics and Eclogues, but the Aeneid is the Opus.
@ZachWeinersmith I'm not sure if that's a fair question. How many artists DO attempt to create a magnum opus but it's never seen as such? How many have one but never even intended to? A "magnum opus" is often an appellation applied by critics after the fact; Spiegelman was just telling his father's story in serialized comics for years before it was collected and became part of the comics canon.
@ZachWeinersmith Because it's hard, it takes years, and most of us can barely pay the mortgage with regular art so we just don't have the bandwidth to make a big swing.
@ZachWeinersmith It feels like you are talking about two different things. Technically, one does not usually set out to create your magnum opus: history just judges it to be so. To use one of your examples, Spiegelman never intended Maus to be his magnum opus, but it has become that because it his most personal, influential, and widely known work. It's not even very long by comic standards, and it's worth remembering he published much of it serially.
@ZachWeinersmith High-risk/high-reward. Your odds of producing an opus are about 1/100000. Your odds of producing lots of decent work that puts food on the table is 1/10.
@ZachWeinersmith skimming this in my feed: “oh, this isn’t the answer they’re looking for, but I should tell this person that there is an SMBC about this”
(looks closer)
oh
(And I see looking at my Patreon emails that it is today’s comic, so I can’t even link to it yet for the benighted few who aren’t yet Patreon subscribers)
@ZachWeinersmith more seriously, partially this is survivorship bias: for every great opus you can name of 100 or 1,000 years ago, there were thousands of artists who just churned out what they could to keep food on the table. We only remember the opus creators, so it looks like opus-focus was more prevalent then.
But seriously, I have a leather-bound complete Far Side, a similar (though abridged) Doonesbury, would buy that for C&H in a heartbeat, and probably should have something similar for Bloom County; none are a singular opus in the traditional sense but surely the collected body of work is a masterwork in an important sense, at least for some artists/media?
@ZachWeinersmith Isn't it the opposite? I feel like every artist I know has a magnum opus they want to make or are attempting - But they don't have the time or resources to have it hit their quality standard, or they've been in the biz long enough that they know they can't start it yet.
Tolkien's another obvious example - lots of little stories and books and things, but his eye was on a grand English epic.
Art Spiegelman - did lots of weird alt comic, but then also made his massive glorious Maus.
Maybe it's always been unusual but I'm somewhat disappointed that you don't see more of this sort of thing. Like, people who make solid sitcoms for years but never even try to make a lasting glorious comedy.
Without saying any names, there are lots of living artists who I adore, and I always want them to stop and take out a few years to focus on create something really hard and strange and at least potentially monumental.
@ZachWeinersmith it's really really hard. Like, you have to both want to, have the ability, and have the means. Not to mention the mental games we play.
@ZachWeinersmith There's an interesting side question about an opus from the cultural perspective vs the artist's perspective.
For Tolkien, from the cultural perspective, The Lord of the Rings is probably the opus. But it's pretty clear that Tolkien would consider The Silmarillion his opus.
I'm curious if Virgil would consider the Aenid his opus. I have a vague recollection that it is considered propaganda for Augustus. Was he trying to write an opus or just make a buck?
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