April 2, 2008
Imagine for a moment, that you are standing in the center of a room inside the Chicago Art Institute. If you have never been there, substitute your memory of any visit to an art museum. Remember? Every wall is filled with large canvas’ inside gold frames and hushed groups meander through the open space, pause, and recline for a few moments on red velvet benches.
Now imagine the paintings float magically off the walls and are placed on wooden easels. Walk around the easel and see that the paint is still wet. Suddenly, before your eyes figures emerge and swipe brushes across the surface. The painters are dressed in clothes that are foreign to you — a different time period and culture. They speak in a language you do not understand and whisper to more people who materialize. These are the people the artists knew in life: those that sold, influenced and encouraged the paintings, those that posed for compositions, and those that were indifferent. Can you see all these people that cram into this one room, along with you, an onlooker from a different time and place in the future? I have asked friends to imagine this and their response has typically been that they have never thought of anything else but the paintings when they visit an art museum.
According to United States Artists (www.unitedstatesartists.org) 96% of Americans are inspired by art and value it in their lives, but “only 27% of respondents believe that artists contribute to the good of society.” This paradox hinges on the fact that few know what an artist actually does and how it is related to a functioning society.
When I first started out as a graphic designer, two co-workers were shocked that I had obtained a college degree to be employed; to them, they explained, graphic design was as easy as playing with buttons until the right control was pushed. While this was greatly insulting, it was worse when my interest in painting was reduced to a frivolous hobby. One roommate told me that before we shared a house she thought my paintings were expensive; afterwards, seeing the time and resources I spent, she thought they were too cheap. Until this time she had never known an artist, nor was privy to the process — something that we take for granted and assume everyone must know how much time and skill must go into his or her work.
In one sense, it is not unusual for anyone in unconnected careers to not know the function or result of another, but even if I don’t know what it takes to be a responsible surgeon or a mailman, I know that their job functions relate to a working society. In the same way who an artist is and what they do relates to the health or destruction of society.
Artists shape culture and culture shapes how we think about history, politics — everything. Artists take complex philosophical and ethical issues of the day and present it in a story. Artists redesign simple household tools and create new technology. Artists create unique, one of a kind sculptures, plays and paintings that cannot be duplicated by any other person, or computer. In short, we rethink ideas that we take for granted and give it back to us in a new, transcendent way.
In this current time artists attempt to fit into a commercial market and a technological world that may in the end not want what they have to offer, regardless of original thought or craftsmanship. After years in these environments, many artists feel stripped of their own creative wells and wind up cynical: emotionally or spiritually void.
I think this is a calling that artists find their value not in popularity, corporate management, but in something bigger. Each generation of artists must continue to work out their unique vision and ability within a culture that may not recognize or exalt their work. A dedication to craftsmanship and the pursuit of truth can go against the grain in an age concerned only with hype and plastic knock-offs and produce work with a lasting meaning.
As we move out of the information Age and into the Conceptual Age, we will have to rely on the type of skills that can only be cultivated through the arts: design, play, empathy, and story telling — to name a few, according to Daniel Pink, the author of “A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.” This is a different way of thinking that was overlooked in the past by a society that valued information and logic, but they are basic human attributes that can be cultivated by anyone. Further more, these attributes can’t be outsourced and will be high in demand as the workforce changes.
“The wealth of nations and the well-being of individuals now depend on having artists in the room. In a world enriched by abundance but disrupted by the automation and outsourcing of white-collar work, everyone, regardless of profession, must cultivate an artistic sensibility. We may not all be Dali or Degas. But today we must all be designers,” Pink argues.
In a world where consumerism is the norm, the value of artists can be counter-cultural or even intrinsic to a functional, healthy society. In the same way, buying someone’s art is also contributing to the same goal.
Recommended Books:
Daniel Pink, “A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age”
Morris Berman, “The Twilight of American Culture”