Social responsibility in the arts?
A person suggested that creativity was personal yet art should consider the needs of others. I say No.
I have to say that art has no responsibility to anyone except it’s maker. Jackson Pollock didn’t heed the responsibility to make art that was ‘understandable’ or helpful or informative or even ascetically "good" (to the majority of people at the time) yet he became one of the most famous artists ever.
Social responsibility changes over time and what one generation takes for granted another frowns upon or makes illegal. Girls used to get married at 13 and so if you painted a child bride back then it was a normal genre scene, now it is either a fairy tale painting or some psychological split with reality, perhaps in a criminal way. Balthus would never make it into a gallery these days because of current versions of social responsibility, yet his work is in the Met right across from a Gauguin painting.
A hundred years ago if you painted a certain leaf of the cannibus plant you were probably a botanist or illustrating a historical thesis, perhaps on the founding of America, a proud patriot and could hold your head high *ahem* in society, but now if you painted the very same leaf society says that you are probably a druggie and will be automatically labeled and catagorized, guilty by association at the very least. That same leaf art is now "harmful to society" see what I’m saying here? The art is still the same exact art but society decides who YOU are for making it.
I don’t think that society should have any influence on art, art is art and if others like it that’s great, if not then it is still art and just as valid a persuit as any other thing, perhaps one day others will appreciate that art but there’s hardly a prerequisite for art to be considered "good" or "acceptable".
Did Vincent Van Gogh have a responsibility to give up his ‘crazy dream of being a painter’ and become a productive member of society instead of a "leech" when it was obvious that no one outside his friends appreciated his art?
Society is like your mother, or a friendly guidance counselor, it wants you to do "well" for your own good, for the good of society but unfortunately it only considers the short term. I think Van Gogh would have killed himself sooner if he had given up painting and became a church janitor, which would probably be the only job he’d feel comfortable doing!
Society is healthy when people are allowed to "fail" in the short term because in the long term those failures might just be our proudest accomplisments, heck the US government itself used Jackson Pollock’s ‘action paintings’ as a ‘weapon’ in the cold war (because the Soviets were so proud of their ‘realism’ and therefore ‘behind the times’ etc).
~* The cat in the Tree – illustration by Darren Daz Cox*~
If someone trys to tell you that your art isn’t showing ‘social responsibilty’ you know what you can tell them to kiss!
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June 2nd, 2008 at 7:36 am
I’m not sure that it’d be possible for me to agree with you more. I feel that way about ALL art – music, painting, writing, film. The viewer always has the option of NOT looking (or reading, or listening, or participating in any way, really).
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:31 am
Oh dear….
I will say that I agree with you wholeheartedly.
But now I have to tell you about the dream that I had on Saturday night, Because Daz, it was me and you ( Now I don’t even know what you look like but I somehow did know it was you)
We went into a big old beautiful Art museum together, excited to see the art hanging inside. But when we got in there, everything hanging on the wall was depicting horribly gross, violent, bloody, gorry paintings that was hard to even look at. There were people in the museum, looking at the paintings, they were sitting, perched on top of tin garbage cans and they were eating, sloppy, messy food, dribbling out of their mouthes,wiping at their faces with the back of their sleeves and talking with their mouthes full, jeering and gaping at the paintings. One old very fat woman, was dribbling food out of her mouth because she had no front teeth and throwing orange peels and garbage at the art on the wall.
I was very distressed and I wanted to cry and I kept saying to you…”Daz, I just want the world to be beautiful, I want art to be beautiful, why don’t they want to look at beautiful things? I just don’t understand why they want to look at violence and gaarbage all the time?”
But you kept walking through as if you didn’t see the ugliness at all. You kept saying “everyone sees what they want to see. We can see what we want to see, they can see what they want to see. Don’t look at their garbage, look at what you want to see and it will be there.”
So I kept looking and then we turned a corner and suddenly there was a different room and all of the beautiful art was in there and suddenly it wasn’t a room at all but it was the ocean. And we were standing on the beach looking at the shoreline.
Then I woke up.
June 2nd, 2008 at 8:57 am
wow! I am so very honored to have been represented in your dream Wendi *bows*
Dreams are tools, sometimes they instruct and prepare us for things, sometimes they are wish fulfillment and often they are showing us what we have learned so far.
I think it is very important that you first of all remembered the dream, and secondly had such a richly visual experience.
One way to interpret the dream (I’ll take the liberty to do so) is to say that all the characters, are actually parts of you, your fears, your goals, your current state of mind.
Even the gross art was ‘yours’, perhaps metaphors for unkind thoughts you have had and the foul people represented the fears of you becoming crass and jaded if you allowed the negative thoughts to continue.
I think the fact that it had a happy ending (hehe) was the part that was congratulating you on learning the lesson of being a positive person but not having to be a ‘perfect’ person.
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:29 am
Hey, thanks for visiting my blog! You have beautiful work! I especially like “Girl under the Magic Moon”. Very pretty. Nice blog and post. I completely agree!
June 8th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
Excellent post…I wholeheartedly agree too!
It is all subjective anyway..and somewhat political..eh? Besides the fact that society is fickle..so why in the hell would we base our lives on what is “in” or accepted today.
You have to go with your own heart! I would rather live with passion…god save me from boredom!
Now about
~*The cat in the Tree*~
it is wonderful…magical just magical!!!
Thanks for sharing your world with us Daz!
gypsy-hearts last blog post..Expand and Live!