Those of you from the Southeast are no doubt familiar with the Art periodical Art Papers. Their newest is guest edited by Michael Jones McKennan who penned a tight little essay outlining the context of the issue’s theme, “Reworlding.” Michael caught my eye as he began recounting the experience of light vis’a’vis the recent solar eclipse. After contextualizing the sheer awe he felt in the face of this celestial event within ever-accelerating globalism, and all it has wrought upon our planet, he asks this question- “What might this have to do with art? Artists? I would argue, just about everything.“
This is a question that has been on my mind for a while, and in particular of late after a wonderful bike ride on my City’s greenway* with Jean Gray Mohs as we traveled to a meeting of the Discourse and Dialogue group. The question was different, and, paraphrased, was “what do Artists have an obligation to say or do in relation to society?”
My answer is this- Artists don’t have an obligation to engage with the world we live in by default. If a person can be said to have an obligation (and I’ve written recently, I have some of the feelings about the idea of obligation), I feel it derives from our shared humanity. IE, it does not derive from our facility with our hands or our connections to a fairly elitist ecosystem operated to secure the desirable objects of our present cultural moment (granted, access to the same is a motivation for many to use it as a vehicle, which seems fair play to me). Michaels’s answer is much the same and more eloquent- “The process of considering the macro reality that our bodies are cast within is part of an ancient story; an arc as old as humankind that artists have been the de facto fablers of. World is a primary protein of an artist’s diet.” This reminds me of a quote by painter William T. Williams “My art is about my experience which, by nature, makes it about other people’s experience . . . I’m trying to evoke human response. My demographic is the human arena.” Every one of us is a human first, before we invest our energy in remarking upon this confusing, amazing, often rewarding, occasionally damaging and hopefully enlightening journey called life.
To say that we have have a duty as creatives to critique a world from which we cannot extract ourselves is an odd hypothesis from which to start. I try to embrace the construct of poststructuralist thinking because of my values, yes. Having grown up in an evangelical household with near constant purity tests that required always saying the right words, finding the line between true intellectual rigor and turning the crank on a propaganda apparatus is part of my journey. Approaching the role of artist with devotion does mean attempting to look at oneself from some… sort of… position outside of ourselves- odd, right? Avoiding virtue signaling (yes, I’m sort of doing it now) and honoring the obligations of privilege with service (which is a position allowed by privilege), blah blah blah something about rivers and crying and tiny violins #firstworldproblems. All of which leads me to the thesis that, to love the potential of this world and hold us accountable to ourselves, and to earnestly strive to draw others into community or at least understanding… feels like a different point of origin to me than “artists have an obligation to speak out.” My… gut feeling is, it is one that allows all people to journey this path, and for the broadest range of values which consider and esteem shared humanity to participate in this- the– conversation.
*BTW, Raleigh Greenway regulars be sure to swing by the Walnut Creek educational center and see Derrick Beasley’s recently installed sculpture.
Painting After Art is Dead 