The Fine Art and Design Blog of Darren Daz Cox

TDB is a social networking site for people over 40 and so I joined and joined in on the art conversation, the forums are broken so I’ll continue the topic of social responsibilty in the arts here. One 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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