Artists

[pce]

there's all this talk about artists' roles in society and whether they are important to society. my answer is: absolutely yes.

people point to john lennon and say "look at him, he's talking about 'imagining' a better world but he's not doing anything to reach that goal. furthermore, he's living in a mansion while people starve." well, in my opinion that is exactly what he should be doing. as an artist, his job (at least part of his job) is to point out problems in society. it is up to the rest of us to fix them. that is what he gets paid for. the fact that workers can't afford as good a life is not his fault, but he's pointing out that that is a problem.

if you look throughout history, whenever there's been a hard time in society, the artist has been commenting and criticising it before anyone else. the artist is the conscience of the public and since there will always be problems in the world (afterall we are all human) there will always be the need for artists to push those problems to the forefront.

socially conscious artists like john lennon and (my favorite) charlie chaplin are not only important to society but absolutely imperitive to a progressive world.

(p.s.:not to mention the very important task of documenting the evolution of humanity not factually, as in a textbook, but profoundly, powerfully, and emotionally as in picasso's "guernica" )

[Vide]

You should read The House of the Spirits by Isabelle Allende and pay special attention to Pablo Neruda's role therein.

I agree that artists are beneficial to society, but they do not deserve their wages or their benefits. What I mean by that is that I am opposed to musicians making $100 a year for singing three songs or painters selling portraits for hundreds of thousands. They charge too much for access to their services. In addition, I am opposed to unskilled "artists" who make their careers by riding the wave of current popular trends *coughbritneyspearscough*.

[El Che]

Dont reduce the artist to the social, to do so is to reduce man to the social. It might seem that socialy conscious art is the ultimate, supreme from of art, but this is a fudamental mistake. Certainly to those politicaly aware encountering that social awareness in art is a close encounter with ones own self, but that encounter is possible on a variety of levels. You are more then your political position, even if politics is your life. Art is an extension of man, and man transendes the social, which is fortunate since for most of us the social is oppressive. Indeed, and im getting a bit of track here, I think that transending the social often is a quality and the mark of greatness. The social or the daily is pety and false. If you waste all your with it your infact wasting your time on a fiction. True that its a necessary fiction, granted that its an amalgamation of fictions that you can not escape but its is none the less a bunch of worthless bollocks. There is more truth in a moment of reflection/creation than in a life time of pety troubles within the confines of social existence.

Is art a necessity? is thought? To each his own. Its not something you can force on anyone, its not something you can confine or restrict to a subject. Its a necessity to those who feel the necessity. If im only interested in political art then thats my buisiness, if im not interested in art at all than thats also my buisiness.

To finalise I will say that in my opinion John Lennon`s "artistic" productions are rather poor, pop, shallow and devoid of meaningful content. But I wouldn`t invalidate, or think differently about his music because of what he does or is as a man. The man is one thing the work of art is another, its independante and stands on its own to feet.


(Edited by El Che at 2:24 pm on June 18, 2002)

[pce]

el che, here's my opinion: (i assume by 'man' you mean the individual and by 'social' you mean society/social commentary) man is an inherently social being. i don't think you can separate man and the social. everything that man is and everything that man thinks is a result of his surroundings and influences. that moment of 'reflection/creation' is nothing but a reflection/creation based on what that man has seen in society. it may not be a direct commentary on the social but it is a result of the social. if you take that same artist, raise him outside the reaches of society, then (firstly he may never become an artist as paris says) wait for that moment of reflection, you will get something totally different than if he was raided in society. why is this? it's because everything we do is a reflection of where we are whether we are conscious(ly being political) about it or not.

and about the whole artists being paid so much: i agree that they shouldn't be paid so much, but the fact that they are is not their fault. afterall, they are living in capitalism. if people are willing to pay whatever the price is then they'll take it and gladly, because in the first place, it's almost impossible to make a living as an artist. so when they make it, they're happy to get as much as they can. that doesn't mean i think it's necesarily fair or right...but it's not their fault.

[Hattori Hanzo]

art is essential to society

[El Che]

Pce, that is crude determinism and it is selling art short. You can not pressume to know what is at the root of all artistic creation. Nither can you state that an individual is completely determined by his socialy existence down to the last action he takes or position he assumes, you have to factor the individual him self, you have to give him some room, for "he" is you and I and we are not automatones. One is no doubt influenced and condictioned by his social existence but the extent to which one is the above is relative to a number of personal factors like personality, intelligence or simple chance. Simple chance that you meet someone one day that gets you thinking about something. Gross generalisations are usualy a major scource of error, be careful when painting with broad brushes.

Back to art, say you look at a flower one day, and you think "damn its beautiful", to express this feeling you create a work of art, or you get your self meditating on the beauty and "perfectness" of nature. How does the social factor here? let me tell you the answer: it doesn`t. Everyone regardless of class, or watever is capable of such moments, moments where the social existence is forgoten put aside, and other considerations fill your mind.

To say that man is a social being, is to state the obvious, but to say that he can not transcend the social or that within the social he has no room to manuver is to deny him his humanity.

[Hattori Hanzo]

woah, el che man, you really figued it out!

[El Che]

Hattori do i detect sarcasm? If you have something to say just say it, dont pussy foot around it like a little girl.

[pce]

well, first of all, let me say that i don't regard a perfectly painted replication of a flower "art." it might look nice, and i might like it on my wall, but i won't call it art. art, to me, has to be an interpretation of the flower. it doesn't have to be socially consious or political, but it has to say something. (a mere replication is a craft, just as a picture portrait is, say on a drivers license or a family picture you take at wal-mart. ) and that's where i think the individuality of art comes in: how we react to the social factors. everyone is shaped by society, but depending on the person, they are shaped in different ways. raising two different people in an identical manner will not yield two identical people. this is because each individual is shaped by society, but each individual is shaped by society DIFFERENTLY.

that simple chance of meeting someone and it making you think about something, is in itself an example of an aspect of society determining your thinking. if you lived somewhere else, you wouldn't have met that person and you wouldn't have made that thought. (maybe i'm confusing 'society' and 'environment'...but i don't think so)

we are not like automatones, but automatones are built like us. but that's a different discussion, i guess. (and perhaps a bit contradictory to what i'm trying to say )

(and also, i think it was orwell that said the idea that art shouldn't be political is political in and of itself. allthough that's not EXACTLY what we're discussing, i think it's a related.)

[El Che]

Paris, thanks for the compliment. (I think )

Pce, in my example I didn`t say the artist would paint a flower, I said he would paint something to express the feeling of beauty the flower had impressed on him. Probably each one of us would paint a different something to express the same feeling. And it was just a simple example of feelings and thoughts that having nothing to do with us as social beings but rather with us as men. Art reflects that, and it could not be otherwise. Just as some art reflect social consciouness or social existence (for example social realist painting depicting a situation of misery) other art reflects other things. If you say that all art is economicaly determined I`m going to have to get mad at you because that is a very close minded understanding of art and of man.

They say the beating of the wings of a butterfly in Japan can influence the weather in europe. That is to say that everything is interconected in an infinity of causation effect relations. Another thing that art can reflect is, for example, the feelings that result from your contact and interaction with another person. If this interaction is meaningful enough to you then its quite natural that you would wish to express that, it could be a bad or a good experience. Lets consider that it was a bad experience, you got hurt by someone (for example) that betrayed your trust, and you express that in a work of art. Does the economic play a part here? Its quite possible that it plays some part, in that economic and social factors mold our personality and influence our decisions (not to meantion the way we social relate to each other), especificalty the decision of the other person to take advantage of you. But the other person has to take some (I wont quantify) of the responsibility for what he/she did. And what does this have to do with the art work its self? little if anything since the work of art, in this case, is merely and expression of grief. etc etc etc

We can not escape our social existence, nore the ways in which it influences and molds us, but we are much more then our social condiction and art reflects that. It reflects us, our thoughts, our feelings, our maddness (btw have you ever seen art done my mad people? its a good example of raw feelings and something not social) you name it.

(Edited by El Che at 1:02 am on June 20, 2002)

[Vide]

Do you have any examples of art by insane people? I'm curious, that would be interesting to see.

As for the definition of art and the assertion that painting a flower is not art, I must stress one thing: Art is entirely subjective. What is one person's treasure is another's garbage, to re-use an old platitude. You can no more say with any authority that something is or is not "art" than you can say that pizza is tasty or not; it's a personal jugement call.

[El Che]

Someone in the family works in the administrative part of a mental institution. One of the therapies they do is expression through art, I saw some clay figures my relative had at her house. Some of them where actualy very well done, but most of them had no face, the face area was blank. When I asked why, I was told it was because those who made them couldn`t face them selves, but I guess they are the only ones who really know if thats true.

Anyway, I think maddness is definatly an interesting and at the same time daunting subject.

[peaccenicked]

The problem of speaking about art, is in many ways a problem of language itself. Art cannot be narrowly defined. All practice has a level of artistry. Looking in a mirror requires on an objective level:an immediate relationship with vanity. Vanity can be called a bad art form. Specialisation does not destroy general practice, it merely improves it. Ideology as opposed to science, is the only thing that leads to bad practice. Any move is a good move, it is only misinformation highlighted that declares it otherwise.

[oki]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/en...000/2013728.stm

[jimr]

no one should live in a mansion while millions of people starve to death. Lennon basically had infininte wealth. If i was in his place i would secure a small nice house and give all of my money away. Anytime he wants anything practical like a car all he has to do is appear on some show and get payed stupidly large amounts.

The hypocrisy of hermiting in some house accumulating wealth and then singing about a perfect world is immense. That is not art.

[Panamarisen]

We are all, indeed, social beings. That´s the nature of man..., but just his biological nature (which, of course, includes a lot of aspects, i.e., psychic, emotional, physical, etc).
At the same time, man got his inner self, absolutely different and individual for each one. Eastern disciplines such as yoga and others, preciselly focus on it to achieve things as important as to makes us know who we really are. Because each one of us is an entire little world.
The artists works with both aspects, even if he doesn´t like the idea. In which proportion the social or the inner human being is expressing himself will depend on who he is.
About getting rich while working as an artist, it´s different if you live in a country like Cuba or in a capitalist country. In the second case, guess it´s up to the artist, up to his own scale of ethics and justice to get an important profit from his work of art and keeping it for him alone, or rather help the others less "fortunate". My personal opinion in this point is that if he cares for justice for everyone, it´s good he gets well rewarded, so he can be able to acquire enough power as to change things for good (and there are some good examples today).

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!