“What is your greatest ambition in life? To become immortal and then die.”

(a line from Jean-Luc Godard’s 1960 film, Breathless)

There is a prime motivation for why artists including documentary filmmakers undergo the beautiful struggle of working on and accomplishing profound creative work. It is above the commonplace agreement of pursuing one’s passion and below the overly-rated notion of building and securing a legacy. Artists go out to reach greatness with their respective work for the continuing opportunity to be relevant. Relevancy goes a long way in today’s global internet sphere where platforms of endless communication are streamed by the second through unlimited and boundless avenues to disseminating and distributing variegated works of art and artistic expression. Relevancy brings a given work to it’s hallmark importance helping it establish a place in the current issues of the times as well as establishing a historic mark years down the road. Relevancy is about being pertinent to a valuing societal focus, the endurance of creative significance, a crowning artistic and innovative achievement that moves human potential forward, and the profound undertaking of goals that renders a person in positions of power and influence. Relevancy keeps one connected with the matter at hand or however long an issue, policy, movement, thing, conversation, and material is meant to occur in continuity. When a writer writes a novel or when a fashion designer puts together a fashion line or even a musician who completes a song they move with the intention of mattering to a mainstream audience and the status quo. Changing fads and shifting paradigms happen often in the world of art. This makes relevancy all the more relevant in perspective, action, and execution in works of art.

Errol Morris’ filmography is made up of a great collection of brilliant documentary work expanding nearly four decades. One of his earlier films, The Thin Blue Line, delves deep into the case of a wrongly-convicted man accused of murdering a Dallas police officer. This film pushed the envelope on the dynamism and terrain of where documentary films can go. In the film Errol Morris introduced his auteur style of the “Interrotron” for his interviewees allowing them to look directly into the camera when speaking. This effect establishes an intimate connection film subjects can have on the audience. Moreover, the use of re-enactments was the first time such an element was incorporated for a long-form documentary feature which ultimately led to the film being snubbed as a contender for an Academy Award nomination. The Oscars’ cited the film under the genre of “non-fiction”, arguing that it was not actually a documentary per se. Today, re-enactments are used all the time as a key element in documentary film storytelling. Errol Morris’ work in making The Thin Blue Line cemented him as relevant in the documentary film genre as well as in the world of television and film in North America. These are ultimately the reasons filmmakers, photographers, and artists do the inspired work of creating something out of nothing. Not necessarily to accumulate a lot of money or reach unprecedented levels of fame but to be relevant in subject matter, delivery, and conversation on a given topic. Relevancy shows that a given content creator has made an impact and a lasting impression outside of mere niche markets through their given work.

Greatness and not perfection is the course artists chart for themselves as they go to work. Greatness for excellence in quality and profundity that allows viewers and consumers of art to think, learn, gravitate toward, and connect. Such greatness is a matter of relevancy—the kind of thing worth dying for if not sacrificing prime years for. Relevancy is the opposite of mediocrity. In fact, mediocrity is the anathema to relevancy. Both cannot exist in the same context. Morgan Spurlock’s 2004 fast food documentary, Super Size Me, challenged the McDonald’s franchise service of value meals leading eventually to the giant burger corporation to abolish their super size value meals. To this day some ten years later Spurlock’s film stands as relevant in the growing conversation of healthy diets in America’s fast food culture. However, greatness in no way is fitted in the guise of the superficial—the ego. It is the securing and establishing a mark and impression on those the art has reached. It extends the possibility of imagination and leaves an inspiring impression for others to follow. Whether such relevant work builds into a lasting legacy after one’s death or retirement from an artistic trade is an add on—not the root of the motivation. Michelangelo in his painting of the Sistine Chapel, Vincent van Gogh’s prolific work in Post-Impressionist paintings, Stevie Wonder’s “classic period” albums of the 1970s and Ingmar Bergman’s auteur film works all place these figures in timeless categories of their respective art and industry. The timelessness of their work—the reason we are still talking about them today—is what makes relevancy the thing for creators—doing something meaningful; something that counts.

What is important to note here is the approach and mindset an artist undergoes to pursue his or her craft. The seeking to be relevant is not the very inspiration that fuels the artist to begin and finish. While relevancy is, indeed, a goal in mind they have the real inspiration in their approach and mindset is quiet simple—to create. But no novelist or sculptor, music producer or photographer wants to just simply create for added consumption to a diverse and growing audiences in the ubiquitous avenues of the world wide web. Instead, an artist wants to achieve the impossible, the different, the amazing, the profound, the brilliant. These are the components to relevancy in the impact of the completed project the artist sets out to pursue. Pablo Picasso’s mural-sized oil painting, Guernica, is believed to be a response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country village in northern Spain, by German and Italian warplanes at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. Upon completion, Guernica was displayed around the world in a brief tour, becoming famous and widely acclaimed, and believed to have helped bring worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War. Here, Picasso makes himself relevant to the changing times of his given society. Much could be discussed on all points of views on whether an artist creates with an audience in mind or not. What can be agreed upon, however, is that the artist–like his audience–is impressionable by the relevant creators of the past and mindful of how his or her creation would be received in the present and future tenses. Thus, an elaborate mindset in the creating of a given work shines throughout the artist in pursuit.

The backlash to relevancy can lead to career subjugation, ostracism, and even death toward the artist and his work. This is a result primarily to the catalyst of relevancy—truth. Truth is conveyed and expressed in an artistic accomplishment through one’s given style for delivery. In regards to the field of epistemology, the theory of knowledge, over the centuries there seems to be a corollary relationship between truth and works of art rendered in the aesthetics. There are those who argue that artists (and we are still using the word “art” in a wide sense to include film, literature, music, and other art-forms) have a special responsibility to convey the truth. This responsibility derives in part because the impact of their work gives artists uniquely unusual power and from the special position of art–the visual spatial dimension as well as the performing arts–transcends language toward truth or, at least, to what is real. This responsibility in turn produces relevancy. However, the connection to truth in content creation may not coincide with the changing times of a given milieu. If society is not ready for such a dissemination of truth through artistry then the artist is threatened, marginalized, stigmatized, and harassed if not, worse–jailed or killed. One of the most popular American novels that was initially banned after publication was Mark Twain’s masterpiece novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The novel was banned largely due to the fact that it contained information, ideas, and language that conflicted with audience members’ own values and beliefs. In clearly elucidating the racism of his time toward an audience too oblivious or ignorant to accept it through self-reflection Mark Twain made himself relevant at the cost of his reputation and career. Ultimately, he and his book prevailed as a historic mark in legacy–pushing forward a much needed conversation. However, not all great art or artists get accepted, congratulated or posited in favorable reception when his or her work produces the truth. Sometimes over time the art is eventually understood and accepted for relevancy. Truth comes with two sides–those who hold to interests in fragile institution(s) of power and those who work in finding, examining, corroborating, and then releasing it.