WHAT IS THE ROLE OF ART IN SOCIETY?
Turning One's Back On Low Art
Last week I asked ‘what is the role of art in society?’
In an earlier essay I proposed that high art, art which refutes the propaganda intentions of low or popular art, art which turns its back on prurient sexuality and on immature emotions, that this high art creates a set of unique relationships between formal beauty (that which we find appealing at a given moment in our cultural history) and truth.
In meaningful art, big art, truthful and relevant art, the main thing that happens is that content becomes transformed by an artist’s use of creative forms. Amongst these forms are the proportions of an ancient temple, the underlying triangular form of an Italian Renaissance painting, the stylistic deep-focus of Orson Well’s Citizen Kane, and the entrancing lyricism of Lorca’s poetry. Form is constructed out of stone, canvas and paint, flickering light, words and sounds, as well as experiences, obsessions and the influences of previous cultural productions. It arises when the architect understood that the proportion 3:5, 5:8, 7:12 seemed to be right/correct/beautiful; it arose when Leonardo came to understand that the gentle blending of colours rather than the drawing of a line was more a reflection of how we see the world and that this ‘sfumato’ was a naturalistic and delicate expression of light and colour in all their beauty; it arose when the director of photography saw that the unnatural quality of deep-focus gave the audience an artificial but exciting way to see figures in space that spoke of multiple layers of realty and that it was also beautiful to behold; and when the writer placed sounds and meanings side by side to entice and conjure our most profound dreams and that it was a beautiful balm for our souls.
Those forms offer different truths, which are often neither acceptable nor understandable by the mass of people, those subsumed in the stagnant passé powers of the slowly dying present ruler’s diseased culture.
The substance of art, its essential ingredients (visions, ideas, concepts, newly arising perceptions about the meaning and value of life and especially a view of our lived reality) offer stories, plots and characters, which suggest ‘subject matter’.
Subject matter joined with new forms and technology, is translated into a fragment of social production (art) which speaks to and for others, which engages them in ideas offering new truths challenging the old stagnant, repressive styles, undermining the immorality of the dominant culture.
This new art is often denigrated, insulted, spat upon because the Establishment, who amongst them are the guardians of the awards, grants and contracts which admit artists prepared to compromise themselves, into the film studio, the exhibition space or the theatre. These guardians are terrified about allowing viral ideas through the establishment’s gates. These officers of the culture know well they may be asked to fall upon their swords or be dragged into public humiliation for having allowed too liberal a view to be revealed.
Aesthetic form is the material that re-transforms truths into aesthetic content. In art, as opposed to documentarist work, content is abstracted, mediated, poetized and estranged in the name of revealing the deeper realities of the social and inner lives of the people.
As content becomes transformed by artistic vision and craftsmanship, into something of rare beauty, a deeper more truthful and insightful view of reality is offered to the captured, oppressed audience. These insights are antithetical to the dominant ideology and to the contemporary acceptable set of artistic standards of form and content, called the Cultural Cannon, which constitutes named and unnamed, clearly agreed and only nudged and winked about ideas, semi-philosophical and political notions which are supportive of the position and power of the status quo.
Even as the truths of art are always inconvenient or embarrassing, the question about the value of the work is, ‘does it proclaim, understand, perceive and enunciate a greater truth than the general public are capable of accepting in their conventional and enclosed lives?’
In other words, is the world really as it appears in the work rather than how it is perceived in the daily grind? Has the work offered something more stunning, more earth shaking, more profound and closer to a clearer investigation of the individual’s un-free world?
Can the viewer penetrate its apparent remoteness? Can they see for a moment that a truth greater than they can normally perceive in day-by-day life, is starring them in the face?
If the work of art can help to cultivate the ideas of democracy within our everyday assumptions - freedom, equality of opportunity, the right to an enjoyable life and access to all we need to fulfil ourselves -high culture, education, medical attention, delicious food, beautiful housing, loving relations - then it can give birth to hope.
It is this hope that can accumulate in the consciousness of the people and eventually help them to say ‘no’ to their masters, or to propose new ideas, ways to change the world into a better place.