What is the Role of an Artist?

Art is often viewed as a mirror, reflecting the beautiful hues created by the universe’s masterful hand.  Art is said to be man’s imitation or interpretation of a world beyond our own understanding.  From a historical standpoint, art has been the most effective means at deciphering the voices of civilizations that have long since faded away.   Even in its most primitive forms, art has been a practical, social commentary used to illustrate the inner workings of a particular culture. In some cases, art has been the only documentation we currently have of the minds of intellects, philosophers, scientists, and craftsmen of the past.  If one were to fully adopt the philosophy of Aristotle then I would imagine that this summary would be an adequate depiction of what art must be.  It was Aristotle who first attributed the tendency of art in its original form and its imitation of life to the natural human characteristic to mimic others as a primary source of learning. This observation is true, however it does not account for the artistry that extends the boundaries of one of the worst words known to man, “normal.”  With this theory, the works of artists such as the painter Pablo Picasso and science fiction novelist H.G. Wells, author of “The Time Machine” and “The War of the Worlds” would have been deemed worthless even though we have clearly seen the affects of their work on the masses.  When assessing the role of art as it relates to the past, we can easily see the gravity of its importance. And although we may not see it through the same lens, art is equally as important to our society today.  The question is then, what role do the artists themselves pose as benefactors within the greater context of society?

The relationship society has with its artists is quite interesting. A relationship I would characterize as historically “love, hate.” Good art has a degree of shock value that can go one of two ways, either the audience will appreciate the uniqueness of the work and praise the artist, or the audience will not be ready to fully comprehend the artist’s experience. Hence the term that an artist was “before their time.” Work from artists such as Doménikos Theotokópoulos aka El Greco was shunned, criticized, and ignored while he was living because society, at the time, found his work too confusing to understand.  Whereas Jean Michel Basquiat received an ample amount of fame during his short time on earth for work many consider controversial.

What separates humans from other animals is that humans have the ability to adapt through socializing. The manners in which we do so becomes our culture our shared ideology become our society.  For instance, an individual that makes a new tool will show others how to do the same through language. The style of the tool and language they use become a representation of their culture.  Man continues to evolve through this process of social adaptation where the more we produce and learn from its production, the more our brains develop. There is truth to this concept, but is only a surface level explanation for a much more complex reality. If this were completely true, then I would assume everyone in their respective culture would develop to be carbon copies of each other.  There is a certain innate uniqueness we possess as individuals within a society that allows us to analyze the surrounding environment differently than others. We are each malleable to the influences of our societies, but our differing perspectives give birth to artistic creation. Artists are what I suppose more vulnerable to these influences than others not only due to the public critique of work that carries pieces of their soul, but I would assume that they are also more vulnerable to life experiences as they happen. In order for someone to accurately convey an emotion through a vehicle of art, they must be fully cognizant of that emotion as they are experiencing it in order to transfer that feeling. This may be the reason why artists are, generally speaking, people who are flamboyant in personality and seem to deteriorate from the inside because of the difficulty they have of fitting in.  It is like watching a child trying to force a shaped, wooden block into the wrong opening. Society tries too often to force artists back into what is considered to be “normal” (there’s that word again) through closed-minded critiques, up until that wooden block chips or breaks.  Although Oscar Wilde enjoyed much of his success while he lived, once his reputation was unsympathetically defamed, his depression seemed to lead to his demise.  Depending on the political and social atmosphere at the time,

We are fairly knowledgeable about the Kurt Cobain affect that society can have on the mind of artists, but what about the ways society changes from art?  There is an immense power in art.  It extends past the casual museum painting contemplation and manifests itself in such phenomenon as the original radio broadcast of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” that sent American citizens into a frenzy, and D.W. Griffith’s troubling, racist masterpiece, “The Birth of a Nation” which created black stereotypes still reoccurring in media sources today.  To ethically critique art is to limit the restrictions on the artists’ autonomy and only judge the work based on aesthetics.  Limiting an artists’ autonomy can be seen as also limiting one’s creativity, not allowing them to fully develop can be derived from an inspired state. Plato, however, understood that power art has to influence behavior, and therefore declared it dangerous and in need of censorship.  His forward thinking essentially predicted the creation of media and propaganda.

Artists have one duty and that is to be true to themselves. We are all biological phenomena, never to be duplicated again. There is something intrinsically special to this notion.  Artistic autonomy therefore is important for the evolution of art to remain in tact. Plato was not crazy to imagine a society of citizens pacified by distractions however. When you have specific entities that control mass media, sadly this becomes inevitable. Art should not be owned or controlled.  If I were to make a prediction I would venture to say that if the citizens can find a way to maintain the freedom of the internet, we will then find ourselves submerged in a new age renaissance where the artistic genius of the common man are equally as powerful and accessible as the spoon fed advertisements we are bombarded with daily.