Art is a conversation, then why is no one listening to each other?  

What is a rose by another name? And would it really smell as sweet? #

While I appreciate my friends and colleagues, fellow artists and art supporters who also write and talk about arts issues, I feel what is lost in their efforts is the conversation. Many are writing and speaking artistically, beautifully even, poetic. But when art itself is part of the problem, or at least seen as the problem, I am concerned about furthering a dialogue that can change culture when it is couched in an overt artistic form.

At some level this style is preaching to the choir. To be fair, often times this is necessary. Sometimes the choir needs to be encouraged, needs affirmation that our efforts are not in vain. But if we are going to preach to the choir, don’t expect change. At some point we need to speak to people who don’t already operate, even live, in our language. They don’t use the words we use to comprehend life and understanding. Or don’t operate with the same definitions for the words we use. And don’t be confused or frustrated when we are not understood.

The art of the conversation #

What I love the most about a conversation—an actual face to face, person to person conversation that is not an argument, not about who is wrong or right—there is an implied social contract for the conversation to be valuable, to be effective, for each side to understand or enjoy the other, even at the most superfluous or superficial scale.

“When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.”–R. Buckminster Fuller

What I currently care most to write about are the issues around art and the arts. And that, these days, as related to the Christian faith. As someone who has worked in an arts environment outside of any Christian or religious affiliation in general, one of the things I’ve observed is that much of the problems the arts face in the Church is a Western Church issue tied directly to Western Culture. The problems are the same for the arts inside and outside the Church, just different language and motivations to frame the discussion.

For instance, art seen through the lense of utility is reflected inside and outside the Church. In the Church art needs to be justified as a means, a tool, for evangelism and worship. Outside the Church art needs to be justified by it’s ability to earn a living. Art suffers educational support because it isn’t reading, math, or science (nevermind that reading is art). Both views are based solidly in Utilitarianism.

Et tu Brute? #

The irony about the issue the Church faces in our society is that it is the same issue the arts face inside the Church. Both are seen as irrational, unreasonable. I don’t think this is coincidence. For many Christians there is a solid seperation of sacred and secular. The Church has adopted a dualism that laid the foundation for our own irrelevance. This should be no surprise, then, if society and culture operates under the same dualism.
Just like the problems the Church faces are largely the Church’s making, so, too, much of the problem that the arts face is the making of the artists and art supporters. Artists have accepted and operated under rationalism’s assumption that art is (merely?) emotional, and as such, unreasonable. Just as the Church has long accepted the bifurcation of spiritual and secular, so have artists and the arts accepted the bifurcation of emotion and reason. With reason, culturally, seen as the more important quality, art suffers as unimportant.

As I relate in previous stories artists themselves are averse to thinking of art rationally. They don’t even want art to be rationally justified in order to encourage arts education. This is a problem. The arts are full of dichotomies that, I believe, contribute to a difficult cultural environment for arts support and expression.

I think artists and arts supporters need to come to terms with these issues or creating art and arts support will continue to be a struggle. Everyone is speaking in a different language and no one wants to learn the other’s. That is not a valuable conversation. Shoot me a note if you are so inclined.

blogATnatureofthebeatDOTorg

Thanks,
Joe