ARTO MOVEMENT

I do not make art, but I am certainly an enthusiast of the arts (and humanities) - one of the reasons I study History at university is because I am being trained to understand artworks (music, paintings, prose, theatre, etc.) in all its context, and therefore to understand their hidden beauty. Unfortunately, being enthusiastic and involved in the arts can be difficult in many societies, including ours - we would have met at least one person who treated us with disdain just because they see the arts and humanities as ‘useless’ fields, as opposed to the sciences. Some will wonder if we can earn a living or make a glorious career out of our chosen field (indeed some take it for granted that we definitely will not make much at all, completely ignoring the fact that there are many non-humanities graduates who are in low-paying jobs), some think our degrees are not applicable to any ‘worthwhile’ career at all (the assumption being if you are a law graduate, the only option for you is to be a lawyer, so if you are history graduate, you will definitely be a historian, and what sort of a respectable money-making job is that?).

 

Why is the view that the arts and humanities are not as respectable as the sciences accepted as a fact of life by so many people? Where does this lack of respect come from? My opinion is that this is because the arts, in many societies, is generally viewed as frivolous. Of course, there will be many people willing to talk about the importance of ‘culture’ and how the arts are ‘chicken soup for the soul’, but few can actually discuss the valuable skills that the arts can equip us with, and what the importance of the arts really is in a society. One of the main reasons art is deemed as frivolous is because our artistic discourse, both on the part of the audience and artist, is made up largely of emotionalism, a pattern that emerged in art history from the Romantic era onwards.

 

As human beings, we are greatly emotional creatures. When an object is presented to us, our instinctive reaction is emotional: our subconscious first tries to detect how we feel about this object before we formulate a train of thought - and so it is with artworks. We thus tend to discuss the emotional and aesthetic impact of artwork before discussing what makes the artwork so pleasing and moving. This is not a problem in itself - we are, after all, always more interested in the final product of a project than the process. What becomes a problem is when the discussion does not move beyond emotions and aesthetics. We must understand that when, for example, a poem moves us, it is not solely because the outpouring of the poet’s heartache comes from the depths of his or her soul. The poem is moving not because it deals with an issue we feel strongly about; it is moving because it captures and describes accurately what we are feeling or if it introduces new perspectives. We forget that the poet’s emotions and personal experiences merely provides the content and inspiration, but what truly makes the poem effective is the manipulation and creative usage of words. This will be accomplished through the careful selection of words and the structure employed - and that is where the training matters. Artists realize but hardly mentioned in explicit terms, that producing artwork is a science. Compare artists to that of an effective public speaker: what truly makes their speeches stand out is not whether the topic is close to their hearts, but it is their choice of words and the structure of their speech which enables their listeners to pick up passion and sincerity and be moved and swayed by it.

 

Our generation of artists, however, belongs to a period where our distinction between the sciences and the arts is shaped by the increased division of labor across societies. To this day we occupy ourselves with the debate on the line between the arts and the sciences - a debate I have stopped engaging in for it is based on the false illusion that the arts and sciences are traditionally mutually exclusive, an illusion shaped by university degrees and future career paths. Indeed, many tend to think the arts and humanities are not scientific just because it does not have the word ‘science’ in it or because there is not talk of molecules or chemical processes! (Note that there is a very big difference between the terms ‘the sciences’, ‘science’, and ‘scientific’.)  I would even argue that there are some fundamental skills that are shared between those who pursue the arts and those who pursue the sciences. An example would be: to be able to do vectors, architectural design, and painting a life-like landscape, you would need to have a sense of spatial awareness, be able to visualize vividly and consistently in your mind and engage with that mental image. We are also probably aware of the strong correlation between the ability to study music and the ability to do mathematics.

 

Furthermore, our conception of art is borne at a time where ideas about art have drastically changed and are more flexible, and this makes the production of art seemingly less disciplined.  Twentieth- and twenty-first-century art emphasize less on realistic portrayals and place more importance on interpreting experiences. Artists educated in this century are thus even more encouraged to talk more about the emotional experiences of their works rather than discuss the processes and the behind-the-scenes that goes on during production. The end result is to create the impression that all artists have to do to produce their works is to indulge in their joys and sorrows - when in reality the road to production is a combination of mental blocks, intensive research, practice, planning, organizing, restarting everything from scratch, willingness to adjust your current assumptions and perspectives - all the challenges you might face if you were working in a research laboratory.

 

The main task of this article has been to propose a brief history and explanation of why there is a lack of respect for the arts (and humanities). The final message of this article is that if local artists want to be respected, to be funded, and supported,  not simply within their circles but by society at large, they not only have to create good and promising works, which they already do, but they must be equally eager to talk about their training and the hard work that goes into it. They must present their works as rational, logical works and not simply as purely emotional expressions. A lot of artists love saying that ‘art is everything’ or ‘everything is art’ - which I strongly dispute (but that is a different story for a different day). The more accurate thing to say is ‘anything CAN be art, but not everything IS art - we have scientific standards as well’. As I said earlier, I am not saying emotionalism are bad things in themselves; I am merely trying to explain why emotions instead of the scientific processes behind production inform the bulk of our artistic discourse. Artists are, like anyone else, a product of their time. But, as I have said, in excess, it takes attention away from the hard work of production, and portrays production of art as a purely emotional - and therefore frivolous - endeavor, and thus loses the respect of those who are not trained in the arts. (That being said, I have even been in contact with people trained in the arts who have very little respect for the arts.)

 

The various social media accounts promoting a discussion of the local art scene are not only great opportunities to promote festivals, zines, and other events, but a great public platform for artists to discuss amongst themselves on the knowledge, expertise, and struggle that goes into doing what they do and doing it well. I currently study in the United Kingdom, and it is enviable just how much importance their mainstream society place on taking care of their local art scene (indeed, woe betide on any government or institution which tries to cut funding for the arts and humanities). They value the arts because regardless of whether they are personally keen on the arts or not, they do take the field seriously and recognize that it has made considerable contributions to their history and development. But if you want people to support you and to be on your side on a long-term and more concerted scale, then you have to give people a good reason to support you and to be on your side, and the good reason is that your audience, listeners, whoever should not feel that they are supporting mere fluff.