Art

So as I was driving to work this morning listening to NPR I heard a very brief quip from a rapper out in Seattle, I believe, and he mentioned the responsibility of the rapper. And it got me thinking. What is the responsibility of the artist? Any artist. The writer, the playwright, the sculptor, the poet, the chef, and even the rapper, for after all, a rapper is a musician. Which led to the age old question, what is art?

We could go with the Keats' thing. You know: Art is beauty, and beauty is truth, and truth is beauty. But that's kind of like saying that God is love. It may very well be true, but you still don't know a whole heck of a lot, since most of us truly don't have a clue what love is, until maybe it comes and bites us on the ass.

Then there is one of my favorites: Art is what you can get away with. That was offered by Tom Miner and Betty Grossens. They used to publish a poetry magazine out of somewhere in California called PinchPenny. Quality stuff for low budget small press. Then one day they decided to explore the world and haven't been heard of since, at least be me, that is. Are you guys still out there? But back to their definition. It very well may be true that art is what you can get away with. After all, look at some of the things that we have called art. Is Maplethorpe's photographs of gay men having sex truly art? Is Michelangelo's David art? Playboy certainly has artistic qualities to it, but then, how about Penthouse? Hustler? Jugs? The trouble with Grossen and Miner's definition is that it asks too many questions. We're looking for answers.

So on to my current favourite definition of art, that given to us by Tom Robbins from his novel Skinny Legs and All. (In my opinion not his best, but still good. My favourite Robbin's novel has to be Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climes. But I digress.) Where was I? Oh yeah. Robbins says, "Art is imagining what no one else has ever seen, and then creating it." Of course, according to that definition, that would include any new invention. New ways to torture would be art. New ways to put stripes on the highway would be art. New ways to cook left over spaghetti would be art. And maybe they are.

Along those those lines, does an artist have a social responsibility? Should an artist's goal be to create beauty? Should it be to avoid those things that will cause suffering? But then, is suffering sometimes necessary to bring about a greater beauty? Should an artist be an agent of change? Damn it! More questions.

And of course, there's always the Beatles. "There's nothing you can do that can't be done." (All ya need is love...wah wah wah wah waaaaaah....)

OK. Here goes. A melding of all of them. It is the artist's responsibility to take the ordinary--to take what we may already know, may already believe...or perhaps should already know, should already believe--and present it in such a way that has not been seen before. A way that conveys both beauty and truth. And he or she will know it is art if only one person agrees.

In a nutshell: It is the artist's responsibility to convey a message to the audience without boring them. That message can be anything. It can be that homosexual eroticism is art. It can be that genocide needs to stop. It can be that art doesn't need to have a message (think on that one for a while).

Regardless, art must entertain. Perhaps not everybody, but at least somebody. And preferably that somebody is who the artist was intending to entertain to begin with. But not necessarily.

OK. I'm going to stop now. More later.