Over the two arts conventions I’ve just marshaled through, one particular comment has been bouncing around in my head more than others. It was said during one of the many AmericaSpeaks caucus sessions in Denver, that gathered groups of 8 to 10 cross-disciplinary participants to talk about larger, common issues of performing arts policy.
The group was bemoaning the disconnect between the professional arts and civic life, evidenced by their tenuous support in city councils, state budgets, and federal policy. And then one participant said this:
”We need to stop making the arts so special.”
The participant didn’t mean it in a snarky way. He had just realized the strange and often self-produced gulf between creative expression and everyday life. Art shouldn’t be an experience we reserve for sacred and exceptional moments, he said. It should be an expected and completely normal part of everything we do.
There has been a perceived strategic advantage, at least in the past decades, in promoting the arts as separately important to community and society — a unique and specialized form of expression that demanded special protection and focused support. But the group was coming to realize the downside to that strategy, which is to disengage creative expression (particularly professional creative expression) from the everyday, the expected, the assumed, the obvious.
Art and artistic expression shouldn’t be the jewelry of society, it should be part of the blood, part of the muscle, and part of the bone. When our strategies set us apart from the world so that we can be separately admired, supported, and valued, we shouldn’t be surprised when we are perceived as separate.
As John Dewey wrote more than 70 years ago:
As long as art is the beauty parlor of civilization, neither art nor civilization is secure.
Hi Andrew,
Which reminds us that *engagement* of the audience as co-authors of the experience is vital in making the arts *part* of life, rather than an adornment.
Matt
Lynette Jennings, in her keynote speech in Little Rock at this year’s CODA conference (www.codacraft.org), hit on much the same subject. She said that there is a wall between Art and US culture. Art built that wall. It is up to Art to tear down the wall.
Art should be part of the blood, muscle and bone – but art should always be sacred, exceptional, unique and specialized. Every art form I can think of originated from a shamanistic source, and if we make art an “everyday” experience, we may as well hang up our hats.
Art and artistic expression shouldn’t be the jewelry of society; they should be the clothes. Only those called to practice them will feel them as blood and bone, but we should at least offer them as necessary shoes, underwear, shirts, to people who think art isn’t their style.
It is their style. Every day.
People buy music; they steal it; they hum it in their heads.
They go through a culture of color and motion and ads. They just think that if something’s aimed at them, it’s a request to buy something, and they have defenses against falling for anything that has a price. Unfortunately, they think anything free is for suckers, just with a hidden cost… this is turning into a downward spiral, isn’t it?
Funny…we thought about this concept in the mid-90’s when the Berks Arts Council undertook the Berks Poetry Project as a pilot. Our goal was to take arts to where the people were.
Was it the church basement, where the seniors had gathered? Absolutely.
Was it the youth adjudication center where troubled youth learned the value of putting pencil to paper and expressing themselves? Absolutely.
Was it the Vietnamese Cultural Center where new citizens were struggling with English? Absolutely.
Then, faced with another dilemma in the community which was “what is our culture” when trying to define the uses for a proposed civic center, we were put to the test once again.
Reflecting the culture of the region deep in blue collar country and the leading industry of agriculture, did Monster Truck Explosions depict our “culture?” The debate still looms.
Larger than any of these, was a compelling statement that I used when trying to persuade the County Commissioners that they should increase our annual award. Quoting Tony Kushner (from the most recent Americans in the Arts convention in L.A. at the time), I stated, “Gentlemen. The line has been drawn. You are either for the arts or you are a barbarian.”
Sometimes, those in the grand marble palaces where the arts are being sequestered have to grab hold of themselves and decide why they choose not to be barbaric and permit others to join them.