19.2.08

On the Responsibilities of the Artist

This world cannot survive on the concept of the "starving artist", no matter what romantic quality the notion has. We live in a time in which it is necessary that we do what we are most capable of doing (given our interests and talents and inclinations) in order to benefit the world in the way that we feel we, specifically, may best be able to. We need to view this time as an urgent time. We cannot afford the luxury of apathy. We cannot, for example, be content with being a "teacher" just for the sake of being a teacher - for the sake of taking comfort in knowing that we have a specified and defined place in the world - but rather we should be teachers in order to encourage excitement and passion for learning in our children and in the children of others.

There is nothing cutting-edge or revolutionary about being an artist just for the sake of calling yourself an artist. If you choose to dedicate your life to an art, you should know exactly why you have chosen to do so, and you should know what you want to say with your art, and you should dedicate hours of each day or any free moment you have available to your craft or your medium. If an individual only paints or writes or acts or takes photographs or plays his instrument once in a while, yet chooses to be an "artist" by title, so that he can really just be a burger-flipper and make himself more interesting or seemingly-progressive by labeling himself as such, he is running the risk of insulting both his craft and his culture. He is giving the artist a bad name, and god knows the artist already has a bad name.

The artist takes on the role of serving as a conscience: A conscience for technological advancements, a conscience for politics, a conscience for world events, a conscience for societal occurrences, etc. The artist takes it upon himself to serve as a mirror, on which the world may be reflected in a way that is honest. Art is an arena in which facts may be presented as they are, not as they have been chosen to be distorted. Art is feared, because it can expose some of the ugliest aspects of politics or humanity, and it can do so in a way that is able to effect people of all sorts and of all races and of all classes and of all sexual orientations.

This is a huge responsibility and it is a role that should not be taken lightly. To abuse this responsibility is not only to throw away an opportunity for positive influence, but it is also to aid in the death of the artist as a universal concept. True, the desire to create is innate, and cannot be removed from the human soul; but funding for the arts, and peoples' receptiveness to the arts, and space in which art can exist are all things that can be taken away, and they are things that will be taken away. The artist is already viewed as a threat to many corners of society, for the artist questions that which does not like to be questioned. To be a lazy artist is to be what these corners of society want you to be. To be a lazy artist is to deface what art should be and render it something more of a facade; something that is less threatening to political regimes or large-scale consumerist mentalities or giant corporations. This is what they want. Granted, they do not want you to be an artist in the first place, but if you must be an artist, they would quite you to be a lazy one.

If you even suspect that you may not be able to make a living off of your art, then why spend the time that you already know you must devote to work on something that you do not believe in; something that benefits humanity in no way? Sure, some people can't do much more than flip burgers, and that is all well and good because most everybody has to pay rent, but if you think you are capable of more, you should attempt to do more. If you think that you are capable of more, you have an obligation to do more. "More" can be any number of things. If you are personable and think that you can make someone's day better by kindly serving them coffee, then perhaps "more" is something as simple as being a barista. But if you think you could do something bigger, then you should. Even if art is your first priority, it is a given that paying rent is also a priority (albeit a lesser one), so why not make that which pays the rent (if it cannot be the art) something worthwhile and meaningful? There is no reason not to do this, and a fear that there will be no time for art is unjustifiable. Most jobs that are, as I have said, "meaningful", pay somewhat more than jobs of the mundane variety, and thus fewer hours will be required for a larger amount of money: money and time that can be spent on the creating of art.

If you can afford to live without having to work, and if you choose to make art, then this is fine. But if you need to work in order to support yourself and your art, then getting a job that somehow benefits humanity in a more relevant way that renders you a part of something other than a machine whose parts are human beings is very reasonable, and the act of doing so requires no sacrifice at all. If anything, it requires less sacrifice.

We cannot afford to have lazy artists if art is all that they have chosen to do. We cannot afford to have art become something that is commercial and bland. We cannot afford to let art be a route towards social esteem and popularity and nothing else. We cannot let art be pursued only by those who do it in order to achieve some kind of status. We cannot afford to let art be separated from the arena of intellectualism. We cannot allow our art to be uninformed. We cannot use the "artist" label as a means by which to feign progressivism without really doing much of anything for the world except for supplying hungry capitalists with hamburgers. We can't afford to give the artist a bad name. The term "artist" should not be thrown around haphazardly. To be an artist is to take on a series of important responsibilities. We cannot forget this, or we will allow something else entirely to be superimposed over the concept of "art" itself, and the original purpose of art will be forgotten.