I recently encountered the theory that the evolutionary purpose of art making is to foster community. I think there must be more to it than that because in my experience this theory applies a lot better to some arts than to others.
Take musicians for example. An individual musician usually spends quite a bit of time alone practicing their instrument. But they also tend to collaborate and form bands and then perform their works for groups of other people - community.
Writers and visual artists are a different story. Writing and visual art require massive amounts of solitary work and then there's no guarantee that more than a handful of people will read or see the results.
Viewing art and reading tend to also be solitary pursuits. Artists and writers need a broker to find them a potential audience and then their audience might appreciate them one at a time. In turn that audience needs to discover that others have also seen the artist's or read the author's work. Only then can discussion and community begin. Not a particularly efficient social system.
I'm an introvert and I thrive on the alone time it takes to make art. What I'm not so good at is figuring out how to find a good community for me.
I went to art school in part to find other artists to talk to. That was disappointing. The open-minded, free-thinking artist is a myth. It was cliquier than seventh grade. I think I might have three friends from seven years of art school. (Although maybe I'm really referring to art students rather than artists. Many art students are studying art because they think it shows how cool they are. Then some of them go on to become artists who think the same thing)
Anyway, I have hope for the Internet as social network and community builder.
Blogging is a very direct means of self-expression. In a conversation with a physical person you have to consider who you're talking to and adjust for your interlocutor. If you don't have much in common with the people you regularly interact with it can definitely limit your ability to talk (and think) about the things you care about.
When you blog you get to pick the topic, what you want to say about it and how you say it. There aren't any social niceties about leading into a conversation or give and take. You just put your idea out there and anyone who wants to join you in talking about it can.
And it really could be anyone. The conversation isn't limited by geography or physical presence or whether you know a person or not. I love this!
I can just blurt out anything I want to. If you think it's weird you can move on to another page and I don't have to see the "I'm afraid of you" look you just gave me.
Blogging is also a much more efficient way to foster community than visual art making. Maybe not physical community but conceptual community. Physically I'm alone but I know (from comments) that I have company out there somewhere in the world.
A piece of art or artifact is an expressive object, a means of non-verbal communication by the person who made it. But that communication depends on others' ability to decipher the object's language - a very risky proposition. Communication can't be the most important aspect of making art (and therefore art's evolutionary purpose) since making art accomplishes other more personal functions far more successfully.
Could the evolutionary purpose of making art be as simple as the fact that making art makes life livable for some people? I think most non-musician artists find making art socially detrimental. And yet it must be done. I think that art making's value is specific to artists. Musicians would still make music if no one were around to play with or to listen to them. Maybe not the one's who got into it for the chicks though.
1 comment:
These thought are immediate and a little random, but that is pretty much who I am anyway...so here goes:
First of all, thank you Mel for raising this subject for discussion. I think about this situation, (the isolation of visual art), a lot. It troubles me.
I will state, for the record, that I am a professional artist with absolutely zero "formal" "arts education". I am self taught. The "art world" likes to call self taught artists, "outsiders", a term which I think is as ridiculous as calling any musician without formal training an "outsider". Outside of what?
I think the western art world has turned visual art into something very non-communal. Effete. Intellectual. Sophisticated. Untouchable.
I will compare this to classical music, for the sake of argument. Ever notice how classical music is associated with all things high-brow? academic? intellectual? Ever notice how it has become removed from the every day lives of people?
The same has happened with visual art. I can not think of anything LESS academic than making visual art. Making visual art is an extremely sensual process. It is physical in every sense of the word. The things we communicate may be emotional, intellectual, conceptual...... But the process itself is very, very physical. Artists MAKE things. We very often make a great big MESS in the process.
Somewhere along the line, these things we make became the subject of intense analysis by western intellectuals and academics. In the process, these things became removed from day to day life. Works of art became objects to hoard away in "safe" zones like museums and galleries.
As a result, artwork in the west has become "untouchable", unless you are a critic with an art education, a art-history major, a gallery director, or a wealthy collector influenced by these "intellectuals".
People are genuinely afraid to say what they think about art. I watch in museums as people stand, speechless, in front of paintings. It strikes me as absolutely ridiculous. And it isn't there fault at all. The "art world" of the west has created this situation. The artists create work, the academics decipher it, and analyze it, and buy it and sell it. The general public has NO idea of what is going on with art in the "art world". Even the term "art world" says it all. Why is it a world of its own? Doesn't it belong to the rest of the world?
Artwork made for a select few, inside a select few circles? What? This sounds just like the "snobbery" of classical music to me. Ever notice how few young people attend classical music performances?
Contrast this with how communal art is in say, tribal Africa. Women in certain communities gather to create works of art right on their huts; beautiful, complex, vibrant works of art. Just because the huts aren't selling for 7.5 mil in a western auction doesn't make them any less valid. In fact, I think it probably makes them MORE valid.
If visual art is a means of self expression, (and I whole heartedly believe this to be true), and the goal of this expression is to share with others within your community, then the African art is MORE successful, because it isn't hidden in some alarmed/chained/glassed-off cage where only the wealthy/educated may enter.
If we artists truly want to be a part of the greater community, then we need to bring our art back to the people in our communities...where it belongs. This will involve a bit of ego-adjustment though. If we think that our audience needs to be "smart enough" to understand our work....then we may be in for a shock. If we artists are willing to look at this "world" we have created, perhaps we will find the answers to why it is that our work has become such an isolated thing....as opposed to the communal thing enjoyed by people creating work in other parts of the word.
*this is an incomplete rant, totally unedited and off the cuff. i may come back with more later.
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