This comment was by Anthony Zarat on the post The Art of Being a Hero by Paul Leroux
“Marcel essentially argues that market forces militate against the expression of genius.”
How does your friend explain the lack of moral courage in modern art? Does your friend agree that art was instrumental in leading the way out of the dark ages? If so, how does your friend explain the multi-dimensional depth of Renaissance art? Why were Renaissance artists unafraid to build convention shattering truths into art that superficially adhered to the trivial and/or vain directives of powerful patrons? In contrast, why has modern art become thin, uni-dimensional, and lacking in courage?
Why have artists abandoned their duty to say the un-sayable? This has nothing to do with market forces. It has to do with the decline in moral courage. We have all become cowards, and artists have led the way.
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What kind of art?
At any rate I don’t agree, theres plenty of art out there rebelling against the powerful and the rennaisance wasn’t exactly a time of tremendous artistic freedom so much as artistic spending.
Questioning the powerful and wealthy does not take courage. Questioning social conventions that are widely accepted by everyone takes courage. This is especially true when those conventions benefit the artist’s audience:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Crowe-Slaves_Waiting_for_Sale_-_Richmond,_Virginia.jpg
For the past few years at my college, there has been an annual student art contest centered on found objects, recycling and repurposing objects, the whole “sustainability” theme. There are only a few basic guidelines – can’t spend over a certain amount of money, has to be durable enough to last a few months outdoors, etc.
Number 1 on the list of rules: the work of art cannot be “offensive.” That term is left undefined, of course. Presumably no one on the prize committee is supposed to see anything offensive in the artwork.
I just find this to be absurd. The sponsors want a work of art, but nothing that might ever offend anyone. Because, as we all know, the defining feature of artistic genius is that it never offends anyone…..
This is one of the contexts that artists often find themselves in today. It’s not too much different from socialist realism — art for a specific political purpose, following the party line, defined by a small committee.
I think both commenters above make good points. I also think there is a real problem with art today, and that the suppression of “offensive” content — whatever that means — doesn’t completely account for it.
Re: “offensiveness”, I think people today are sort of schizophrenic. That is:
On the One Hand — There’s a whole school of thought that asserts (in a variety of fancy language about transgressiveness and blah, blah,blah…) that Great Art Offends People. Not For The Faint of Heart, You Know. (Get Me Another Gauloise, Would You?) And then, trailing after that, is a giant herd of folks who seem to be operating on the theory that, if it offends people, it must be great art. This is the logic of a toothpaste commercial: Glamorous Movie Stars use Sparkl-O toothpaste, therefore, if I use Sparkl-O, I’ll be Glamorous. It makes no sense whatsoever. But it is a pretty sure path to attracting attention, and if you happen to be an adolescent, it allows you to turn up at your high school art show with some cut-outs from porn magazines glued to used tampons, dried dog turds, and an empty eye-shadow compact, and if you mention Marcel DuChamp and call these things “found objects” rather than trash, what do you get? 1) You get credit for having made a piece of art without having to learn any craft skills or do any actual work. 2) You get to be offensive in a setting where no-one will call you on it. This last is especially gratifying if, like most kids, you’re pissed off in an unfocused way, and to lack the maturity and courage for any kind of real conflict. So there is, basically, a huge system in place to encourage and reward offensiveness in art, without much reference to other qualities (like just being hopelessly bad).
On The Other Hand — In opposition to this (possibly in reaction to it?) there’s the whole apparatus of Save The Children (from themselves)! This is most conspicuous in educational settings, I think — you don’t run across it much in the professional art world. But where it exists, it’s pretty powerful, and just as stupid as the first thing. The Save The Children theory seems to be that any art that includes an image or representation of X is morally equivalent to X. That is, if you make a movie that has a rape in it, you’re a rapist. If you write a novel where someone castrates her abusive husband, you’re a castrator. Readers & viewers exposed to these works will automatically go out and rape and castrate. A responsible artist would create only narratives of behavior we should all emulate. There are a couple of ways for an artist to get an exemption from this: 1) Be really, really famous + dead (no-one claims that reading Hamlet will make kids stab each other with poisoned swords) or 2) Be horribly preachy and didactic in a way the critic agrees with (You can get a pass from lefty critics if your female protagonist is praised for shooting an upper-class white rapist, and from righty critics if your male protagonist is praised for shooting a dark-skinned Taliban spy with effeminate mannerisms). Unfortunately, already being famous and dead is not an option for new artists, and the didactic stuff has no range, so the exemptions aren’t really usable. The field of play that’s left free is a certain type of art, what you might call contemplative art — landscape photography, stories where everyone thinks and feels intensely but nothing actually happens, instrumental music, abstraction. This kind of stuff can be breathtaking, but it isn’t everyone’s gift, and if your gift is writing Hamlet, trying to be contemplative instead will just screw you up. So there’s a second huge system in place to discourage offensive art, without regard to its other qualities (like being brilliant).
A lot gets lost in the duel between these two systems.
It might take more than moral courage to say the unsayable. Speaking truth to power is one thing if you’re throwing elephant dung at a Madonna. Doing the same to a Koran would be different, no? I suggest the truth-to-power folks show us their guts and do the latter.