agenda

the social valuation for the arts

In order for art to be valued as an essential presence in our lives, people need to understand how art is at once a common and vital reflection of society, crucial for the representation and coexistence of cultures, and at the same time, how art is profoundly personal and specific. The social, cultural, and personal frontiers of art provide depth to our experience as complete, unique members of an inclusive and responsive world.

art

Art has the ability to give form to our values, communicate our experiences, and resolve our limitations. Art identifies the dissonance and brings harmony to these perceptions.

What is wrong with art in our society are the limitations that we perceive of art. The changes in how we perceive art may be changed through our own experience of art. As a human being we function primarily by our visual sense. However, a person does not function by vision alone.

In fact, the more senses that are involved and integrated in a person's experience, the more complete their understanding. Limiting our experience of art to a visual, literal, and specialized practice also limits our ability to understand what it is that art shows us.

my experience

As an individual, I was fortunate to have a family that acknowledged my artistic abilities. I was also privileged to have the resources for art training.

As a child, I took private art lessons and learned techniques for animation, illustration, and classical rendering of the human figure. As a young adult, I was again fortunate to have a family that supported my pursuit of art training and privileged to have the resources to earn an undergraduate degree in Fine Art. I learned techniques for a variety of media in painting, printmaking, and sculpture.

I learned about the value of self-expression, but these lessons were incomplete without the presence of others who supported and appreciated my work. Expression in art, like any other form of communication, does not exist without appreciation.

Appreciation came in many forms. I was able to supersede the challenges of making art with the encouragement of family, faculty, and peers. But central to it all was a personal conviction that I was doing something important.

my perceptions

During my art experience - as for many people who have had the opportunity and privilege to make art - I learned about the many forms of appreciation that accompany a personal expression. I learned to respect the natural world, which I committed to observe with diligence, and attempted to interpret with modesty. I learned to appreciate the autonomous forces at play in the materials I worked with, despite my intentions. The process of art-making was occasionally unreliable and a spontaneous change in the material could often redeem a work that I had spent too much time attempting to control.

I learned to appreciate the subtleties of my own expressions, as they reflected my personality and culture. Similarly, I learned to appreciate the variations and similarities with the expressions of other people, as they reflected their own respective personalities and cultures.

culture

In distinguishing culture from society, it is important to recognize that the features of politics, philosophy, history, science, religion, nature, family, and art are not exclusive to either society or culture. In fact, these features are also present in an individual and have the same capacity to be changed or relate to another area.

Considering society and culture as a broader form of identity, the only thing that distinguishes the two or the level of inclusion.

Cultures may over-lap, occur in varying degrees, or be completely exclusive. Cultures, like individuals, often influence one another and result in resistance or modifications and art, is an inherent manifestation of cultural identity. We recognize a culture based on what and how we perceive the art that it makes.

society

A society, on the other hand, is inclusive and entirely defined by its composition of cultures, individuals, and the changes that occur. Society is the most concretely inclusive form of identity.

Cultures and individuals may define a society but, as a broad and concrete form, social identity is also the strongest and most present influence on our cultural and individual identities. Because of its size and inclusiveness, deliberate social change requires the intention of individuals through the collective abilities of culture.

problems

The problems with art in our society are, like any other identity conflict, a matter of paradox. It is the responsibility of people to recognize this paradox and to understand that the characteristics of our society and our problems with art can be perceived directly through the art of our society.

Observing art in our society, one can see that art is ubiquitous. Like many areas of our society, it also lacks depth. Like the foundation of our singular, historical perspective, our patriarchal interests in power and status, our rapid scientific developments, and the dissolution of our religious and family principles, the art of our society is superficial.

Art is everywhere, but it is in advertising, marketing, and promotion. Art literally exists on the surface - every conceivable surface - covering the relevance of the original surface with an industrial or commercial agenda. Art exists as a separate and elite industry and it exists to convey an image that satiates our limited sense of identity.

society's function

What is a limited sense of identity? To begin, our society functions on a basis of competition. Heirarchy provides a format by which a person achieves a fulfilled identity. Individualization ensures that a person is defined and credited in as completely singular a form as possible. Specialization provides opportunity and variety but often goes too far in removing and isolating a person into the elite; away from what they are also involved in providing for, besides their own well-being - a collective benefit.

In limiting our identity to an entirely individual pursuit we disconnect from the influence and provisions of other people. In competition it is too easy to lose appreciation for the sacrifice of others and as a result, we as society, lose our sense of depth and humanity.

society's dysfunction

Art is everywhere. It covers our walls and it collects in our gutters, our streams and rivers. Likewise, the value of our art is mass-produced, losing originality and meaning, and discarded to accumulate with the rest of our filth and excess. Art is everywhere, but it is also rare to find outside of its existence as a commodity.

In the case of our own society, the manifestation of art from various cultures, including our own, is also preserved in state-of-the-art facilities and discussed within specialized academic programs. Paradoxically, art programs for the general population (in educational, residential, and community settings) are rare in comparison to the more immediate needs of basic survival needs (food, clothing, shelter, protection, vocational training, and occasionally, recreation.)

resolution

So is art more important than food, clothing, shelter, protection, and our functional needs?

I would respond that it is as important as our need to identify, communicate, and resolve our condition.

Our lack of resources and efficiency are precisely why we need art and why we need to develop art in our lives - in our homes, our schools, our programs, our institutions, and our government.

Currently, art is both a mask and an apparition. In the case of popular media it conveys something we want it to be and how we want to be seen; in the case of museums and galleries (where it could be a most substantial form) it is either inaccessible or debated into meaninglessness.

If integrity is a matter of finding consistency with who we are, what we think, and what we do, then art is a way to understand the depth of who we are and what we are able to do. Art can provide us with a system for defining who we are and what is important to us. Art can show us what needs to be done and how it can help to improve our condition.



Thank you