The Purpose of Art Is to Lay Bare the Questions Hidden by the Answers
Arlene Goldbard
The purpose of fine art is to lay bare the questions which have been hidden past the answers. - James Baldwin
Baldwin's epigram reminds united states that to thrive, we must be able to run into through imposed realities and prefab solutions. We may be tempted to seek definitive answers, but what we really need now is to live into the questions.
To inhabit questions means to first unpack their assumptions and implications.
What'south the context for an inquiry into aesthetics and social justice? When I speak on this topic, someone from the "establishment" arts world always asks me this: "What well-nigh standards? What about excellence? A lot of this work isn't very practiced."
It's an assertion, not a question, and I likewise hear it from readers. An academic responded to my recent essay on San Francisco's cultural equity controversy past suggesting that community-based social change piece of work isn't funded because it isn't very good.
My usual response has iv parts:
(i) Some work in all arts sectors isn't very skilful. Who's judging? No i sets out to make bad art, but there's also no way to guarantee proficient work. Critics may pan big-budget films, k opera, blockbuster exhibits. Audience members may flee. Yet in a gazillion arts forums, I've never heard someone ask a major establishment director this question.
(2) Why? Because the marble and money heaped onto the crimson-carpeting arts encases the piece of work in a gold frame, creating a default supposition of excellence. Skillful execution—only one artful dimension—reinforces that. Some frames are so secure that those who notice fault with the work they enclose are shamed, told that their displeasure exposes their own deficient taste.
(three) These questioners are often making a category error, treating process elements as final products. We bloggers could spend all our allotted words listing works of dandy beauty emerging from collaborative processes. But if y'all drop into the storefront studio on a random day, if when you visit the barrio yous lack the aforementioned patience for cultural specificity you lot typically bring to Rossini, you miss the indicate.
(4) Add in the trend to dismiss a whole universe based on a few experiences (the same academic lives 2,000 miles from the work he dissed), and the upshot is that some sectors do good from the default assumption of excellence, immunizing them against such challenge and its consequences.
Consider what happens when the frame is removed. Vii years ago, I wrote about a famous experiment conducted by The Washington Post in which violinist Joshua Bell, incognito in jeans and a T-shirt, his violin case open to receive donations, performed for passers-by at a Washington, DC Metro station. The results:
- He attracted an aggregate audience that could exist counted on one's fingers and a total of $32.17 (which included one $20 contribution).
- 60-iii people passed Bell by earlier i turned his or her head. 7 people in all stopped for at least a infinitesimal. The Post kept count, so I can tell you that in the same space of time, 1,070 people walked right past Bell without stopping….
I'one thousand not suggesting that Bell is less gifted than commonly supposed. But without the gilt frame—the signpost declaring "Excellence here!"—the assertion that artful quality volition triumph seems a footling shaky.
I'm hugely interested in aesthetic inquiry. I try to convey observations and ideas about culture in linguistic communication that braids beauty and meaning. I oft write about questions of beauty and art as a form of spiritual practice, the sublime equally an antidote to despair. My two almost contempo books assert the function of dazzler and meaning in forging a livable futurity. Aesthetics are neither owned by the prestige arts nor new to socially engaged artists. Indeed, making fine art is engaging with aesthetics, total cease.
I of the questions put hither characterizes aesthetics every bit "born from a western civilization/platonic." It'southward truthful that the word has Greek roots. But it's a map, non the territory. The many artists I respect in community evolution and social justice work continuously consider how their work feels, resonates, moves or fails to move. No ane is indifferent to the question of beauty.
We need to avert even accidentally reinforcing the idea that this is an emergent phenomenon rather than an enduring awareness. If the aforementioned questions wouldn't exist posed to red-carpeting artists, if their answers wouldn't accept identical touch on their funding, then why ask them of artists who pursue a social social club of justice tempered by love?
Imagine request establishment artists "what artful values and outcomes are meaningful in your work?" I'd look general statements about excellence, followed by a range of responses reflecting great freedom to experiment, improvise, and adjust. Why should there be more consensus here?
I'll close with another ready of questions that demand considering:
Why do so many accept the default assumption that the establishment arts take engaged properly with aesthetic concerns, but that socially engaged artists need to be schooled?
Why practice so many accept the fiction that red-rug arts work shouldn't be evaluated through the lens of civic purpose when all art either reinforces or challenges "the answers that accept been hidden by the questions"? All art is political, but some gets to pretend it'south not and be judged accordingly. Why become forth?
Why non grant every socially engaged artist freedom to define specific values and outcomes? Aesthetic criteria? Date with aesthetics reflecting the pervasive reality of multiple participation, identities, and meanings?
Why not live into the questions?
Source: https://blog.americansforthearts.org/2019/05/15/living-into-the-questions
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