At a business motivational rally, the speaker repeated, “All you can do is all you can do.”
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes
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I wondered how many people in the audience were already thinking about what they could have done differently.
I took the statement to mean: Do everything you can do and be honest about it.
But from this vantage point in my life, that little jargon looks like a suspiciously convenient expression. Fresh off the motivational-speech hit parade. Is it wisdom, or an excuse to accept less than you’re capable of?
I get it. The statement has a certain appeal. I can see it offering genuine relief after a difficult effort, a little reassurance to the self. “Hey, you kept on swinging, way to go, Buddy.”
But it also provides a convenient way to end an uncomfortable conversation with ourselves. “Yeah, I could have done better, but all I can do is all I can do.” Then comes a myriad of comfortable, well-rehearsed excuses.
Here is my observation: Everyone I know who’s succeeding in the arts is kicking ass and going above and beyond. Nobody is getting a free ride.
Does that mean the people who aren’t succeeding haven’t done enough? That’s a simple conclusion.
Here are a few real-world outliers to play devil’s advocate. Whether they support the title of this post or make a complete mess of it is another question.
Agnes Martin, When Your Best Isn’t Enough
Agnes Martin was in her mid-forties, painting in New Mexico, when she approached Betty Parsons, a New York art dealer who had represented Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.
Parsons took an interest in her work, bought several paintings, and helped her move to New York in 1957. After years of painting without much recognition, Martin suddenly had the attention of one of the most influential art dealers in the country.
That’s a rather unusual career break for a forty-five-year-old artist.
But Martin had a peculiar way of handling success. By 1967, her reputation was growing, and she was gaining recognition in the New York art world. So what did she do? She walked away from the whole business and stopped painting for seven years. Eventually, she returned to New Mexico, resumed painting, and went on to become one of the most respected abstract artists of the twentieth century. Apparently, Martin wasn’t particularly concerned with following anybody else’s career plan.
More to the point of this post, Martin wasn’t particularly sentimental about her own work.
In a 1989 Smithsonian interview, when asked what she did with an unsuccessful painting, she replied, “When it isn’t successful? I throw it away. And I’ve thrown away a tremendous lot.” She went on to explain that she sometimes painted over a canvas repeatedly until she felt she was making progress. Apparently, doing all she could didn’t mean she had to be satisfied with the results. And when asked whether throwing away paintings was difficult, Martin had a rather practical response: “Well, it’s expensive.”
Primary source: Smithsonian Archives of American Art — Agnes Martin interview, May 15, 1989
Samuel Beckett, When Failure Isn’t The End
If you’ve done everything you can and the result is still failure, have you done enough?
Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright and novelist, spent a good portion of his early career trying to get somebody interested in his writing. He was 46 when Waiting for Godot premiered in Paris in 1953. The play follows two men waiting for someone who never arrives. That rather unusual premise eventually helped make Beckett an international literary figure. In 1969, he received the Nobel Prize in Literature. It took him a while to get there.
Beckett also had a keen interest in painting and wrote criticism about the work of other artists. In his 1949 Three Dialogues with Georges Duthuit, a discussion of three painters, he wrote, “To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail.” Four years later, in his novel The Unnamable, he ended with the words, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.” Failure certainly occupied a fair amount of his attention, although by then his own career was beginning to take a rather interesting turn.
In 1983, fourteen years after receiving the Nobel Prize, Beckett published Worstward Ho. In it, he wrote, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Here was a man who had achieved just about every recognition a writer could hope for, still writing about failure. Apparently, having done everything you could on one attempt didn’t mean you’d done everything you were capable of.
Paul Cézanne, When Money Isn’t The Motive
Paul Cézanne had something most struggling artists would have appreciated. A wealthy father.
Louis-Auguste Cézanne was a successful banker who supported his son’s artistic ambitions financially, despite his reservations. When he died in 1886, Cézanne inherited a substantial fortune. At 47, he could spend the rest of his life painting without worrying about selling his work.
Which was fortunate, because the Paris art establishment hadn’t exactly welcomed him with open arms.
For years, the official Salon rejected his paintings. Cézanne had a reputation for being difficult, suspicious, and reclusive. His unconventional approach to painting wasn’t winning him many admirers. Even after his first solo exhibition in 1895, he remained deeply dissatisfied with his work.
He painted Mont Sainte-Victoire, a mountain near his home in Provence, dozens of times, sometimes abandoning canvases or destroying work that failed to meet his expectations.
Meanwhile, other artists were beginning to recognize his talent. Henri Matisse purchased one of his paintings in 1899, and Picasso would later build upon Cézanne’s experiments with form and perspective, helping establish Cubism.
Cézanne continued painting into his final year. He had enough money to walk away whenever he pleased, and younger artists were beginning to admire his work. Yet he continued struggling to satisfy himself.
The Brutal Question
“All you can do is all you can do” might be the most reasonable thing we can tell ourselves after giving something our best effort. There are limits to what any of us can accomplish, and pretending otherwise doesn’t do anybody much good.
But there’s something awfully convenient about being the one who decides when those limits have been reached.
How do we know we’ve really done our best?
Can We Help You?
When you tell yourself you’ve done all you can do, how do you know you’re telling yourself the truth?
Thank you for reading. I appreciate having you along for these explorations, especially when the questions don’t come with easy answers.
Continue The Journey
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I’m grateful for your support and for the opportunity to keep this conversation going.
Because sometimes the wisest person in the studio has four paws.
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