When I was an undergrad, I had this ambition to write an honors thesis about art and social responsibilty, but it never went anywhere beyond a lot of scribbled notes about Ayn Rand's antithetical view to my argument (I'm still not entirely sure why I was so hung up on Rand). Anyway, I've been thinking about the matter lately, not so much about art and social responsibilty, but about the relevance of art (as I mentioned in my previous cockroach post).
So, I was quite interested in a book review in the Guardian about John Carey's What Good are the Arts?
Carey, apparently, critiques elitist views of art (e.g. Clive Bell's comment that "All artists are aristocrats ... Why should artists bother about the fate of humanity?") and argues that the literature is a superior art form.
The comments about the snootniness of art have me thinking more about the recent trend to bring art to the underserved: Born into Brothels, Eve Ensler's work in women's prison, Mark Salzman's work with juvenile criminals. While the various artists are making a seemingly generous act, there is still an element of snootiness in what they're doing. Less so with Born into Brothels (can't remember the photographer's name) than with Ensler or Salzman. I'm not saying that none of them has good intentions, but the kids' photographs get shown to rich westerners (to raise money, of course, but I still sensed this assumption that these viewers will have more ability to understand what the kids are doing, to see the value of their art--and this is underscored by the parents' unwillingness to let their kids get more education, to spend time taking photographs); the prisoners' words get interpreted and performed by professional actresses, Salzman's book is as much about his own writing as it is the kids he works with. With Ensler and Salzman there is almost a sense of surprise about what they read ("the delinquents have souls!") And Salzman's writers don't work at all with craft (whereas he continually references his own efforts to craft Lying Awake); it's as if art for these writers should only be about expression, not art in the terms of careful craft. I hate to by a cynic, but it seems like there's an assumption that these writers won't be able to get writing in terms of "high art."
Ok, just some caffeine-induced rambling. I'm going to stop before my thoughts get totally convoluted.
Also interesting is a collection of artists' comments on art in anticipation of the publication of Carey's book.
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As an art junkie, I love museums and so forth, but I am coming to think that the more important function of art is as a regular part of everyday life. As such, I think every art should be taught, early and often, not as something to appreciate but as something to do. My husband's son, for instance, is running a summer program, Youth City, in one of the city parks; the kids there are doing all kinds of art, including digital ones--movie-making, song-writing and recording, digital photo stuff--as well as paint/paper/clay things. My own son has done, as a function of his music major, a project in a middle school about blues song structure, and the kids wrote their own blues songs. I think that lots and lots of people have arts that they don't show people. It kills me, it really does, that publicly known artists are set up as gurus. I've adopted as my own motto--for the visual and tactile arts, at least--this statement: How hard could that be? I wish that attitude could be the basic attitude with which we approach arts education, in the schools, in public arts work, etc. I wish there were a way to radically purge the elitism from the word art. Everyone deserves art as a practice, not as something someone else does really well, that we all stand around and revere.
I agree that there is an element of condescension in the "arts in prison" movement. As if only a "medium" like a professional writer can pull the "art" out of troubled people, they can't find it themselves or that whatever they do isn't fine on its own. It's like the outsider art phenomena. It's "simple" but rich people buy it because it's so "simple" but then other people can't afford it. It's like valuing art for all the wrong reasons (marketability). I think it's a great idea to have writing programs in prisons, but is there a way to do it that is more organic? I don't know. I've always wanted to do creative writing in an inner city school, but I think there is an element of "let me show you what I know, you poor, uneducated masses." But if they don't have arts/writing programs in those schools, is that better?
There has always been something self-interested and self-aggrandizing about an artist who "benevolently" decides to give a disenfranchised people a "voice." I haven't seen "Born into Brothels" yet but I resist. It seems to follow a long line of documentaries which use the form as a blunt-edged tool to affect social change. These artists are usually middle-class people with humanities degrees, like my film professor in university who showed us her short about a shantytown in Columbia and the people who ate garbage there. Who is ultimately getting the most out of that transaction? In that case, the filmmaker, certainly. So it feels exploitative. She (my professor) is using their extremely personal images of poverty and struggle to get her film into festivals, and, by extension, further her career (get her tenure, etc).
It seems similar to the 80s and 90s trend of pop musicians mining the 3rd world for talent and material (Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, David Byrne, Ry Cooder). It's great that the Buena Vista Social Club has been saved from obscurity, but I'm sure Ry Cooder made a mint off of them in the process. Everybody is getting something out of this transaction: the popular artist, the discovered "ethnic" artist, the audience, the record label. As an added bonus, the popular artist gets an unquestioned rep as an ambassador of the arts (instead as of a colonizer).
A side note: these artists remind me of travel writers who expose perfect, hidden getaways to the world, thus simultaneously nourishing and destroying them in the process. In a way, Peter Gabriel is like a housing development in Belize.
Of the many recent examples of "voice for the disenfranchised" art, I think Born into Brothels is actually pretty good. Even though it bothers me that mainly white, westerners see the kids' photographs, she does seem to be using the photographs to help the kids get an education rather than to promote herself (although, no doubt, she is getting career benefits for herself). I also like that she works with them on craft, that she doesn't just accept any photo from them as a good photo. I think this shows respect for the kids she works with. The problem with marginalized, outsider (whatever you want to call it) art is that the art is often appreciated because of the sense of surprise that someone who is (in prison, poor, disabled, etc.) can create art. And this view is the most disenfranchising of all. The art should be valued for its own merits (if you like it, you like it) and not because someone who is not typically invited into the art world created it.
The conversation also made me think about my uncle who never graduated from high school, worked most of his life farming, etc. And he absolutely loves opera. I know that he would be thrilled to see opera on stage, but he's never been. I think he views opera at the opera house as too elitist, something outside of his access (and not in terms of money). For him, he can listen to opera privately but he doesn't feel part of the culture of opera. And it's silly because he would probably understand and appreciate the opera more than many of the people sitting in the theater.
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