Playing Favorites

Scoff if you will, or mock, or just plain laugh. But I consider myself to be an artist. I know the term “artist” has, for whatever curious reasons, come to pertain mainly to those who work in the visual realms (such as painting, sculpting, or even photography and film), but the fact is: An artist is someone who conceptualizes and then actualizes something abstract.

It’s abstraction that separates the artist from the craftsperson. For even though throughout the ages architects and scientists have occasionally wanted to argue that they, too, are artists, the fact eventuallly surfaces that those vocations result in something concrete – if even in nothing more than a mathematical equation. A building or a bridge, an equation or a formula – all of these are technically concrete in the final analysis of a concrete world. The former might be more obviously concrete, but the latter, after careful examination, proves to be equally sturdy.

What’s the difference between the abstraction of an artwork and that of a mathematical equation? It’s quite simple, really. As abstract as a mathematical equation might be, it represents something actual. It posits itself as a manifestation of reality. It claims to portray, in terms we humans cannot see, something that is real – and which therefore affects (if not dominates) our physical realm. And if there’s anything we humans value to the point of not questioning, it’s our physical realm.

The abstraction of art, on the other hand, exists merely for the sake of its own abstraction. A much simpler way to put this is, art exists simply for the sake of its own existence. The thing about art is, in the long run, there is never any practical need for it to ever be created.

Portraiture is often used as an example against this argument. Portraiture, it is argued, is “representational.” The term “representation,” therefore, is understood to convey an innate realism which is subsequently understood to imply a lack of interpretation or political agenda. But if this argument is true, then why don’t all portraits – from ancient times up until the contemporary – have a photographic exactness? They don’t. They couldn’t. Until the photographic lens was invented, humanity had to rely upon the human lens, which could never exist separate from the politics of its own perception. Even the ostensible precision of the Renaissance grid, despite its revolutionary ability to depict exact perspective, came with its own political baggage. So, too, for that matter, does modern photography, and filmography, and videography. In the world of visual arts, there is no such thing as true artistic objectivity, no matter how precise a medium might be in capturing the proportions of its subjects.

Similarly, performing artists are often accused of not having to create from the abstract. Music, dance choreograpy, actors’ lines and stage directions are acclaimed (from the critics’ point of view) as concrete instructions from which virtually “anyone with sufficient training” could bring to life the composer’s/playwright’s intentions. But it’s a funny thing. We rarely, if ever, see these critics on stage, interpreting what they say is so easy to interpret.

And what of the composers and playwrights? They’re the brave souls who created something from the blank page, just as their musicians and actors must bring to life the music and words that rest upon the pages of those once-blank scripts. Each and every one of these artists, for lack of a better term, is bringing the abstract to fruition. (Probably, incidentally, for little to no pay.)

All of which is to reiterate: Art exists simply for its own sake. This can’t be said about other human endeavors. That is, it cannot be said about intentional, conscious endeavors. The majority of human endeavors are concerned with cause and effect. More pecisely, they’re concerned with survival. Breathing, eating, digesting, sleeping – even impregnation – these activities could technically be, and have been, argued as having intentional components, but as history proves, they are in fact habitual. The same must be said for labor, government and even war. Most human endeavors strive for results. Most of the desired results are physical, monetary, or political. In other words, most human endeavor is practical. But even though artistic endeavor also strives for some sort of result, the intended result -- no matter how practical -- is rarely practical. Art prefers to engage emotion. Art, for better or worse, doesn’t care what it stands to profit; it merely wants to remind us that we’re alive.

Entertainment strives for popularity and profit; Propoganda strives for political influence; but Art strives only for itself.

Within that social context, it’s only the crazy person who persues art. It’s only the dreamer who makes something out of nothing – for nothing. Nothing, that is, other than the sake of creating. Artists want little more than to create. Despite the best of their practical intentions (if they become encumbered by them), artists only wish to make something from nothing. If the feedback they receive sounds like, “Well, isn’t that great?” Well, then, all right! And if the feedback is more like, “That sucks!” Well, then, isn’t that all right, too?

In the long run, is there anything that exists that doesn’t make some sort of statement? Are we so self-absorbed a species that we can’t see meaning in anything? In everything?

That’s what artists are trying to tell us. That’s why I play favorites. I favor the artists. Not because I am one, but because without them, we might just lose sight of our very own God-liness. After all, there isn’t a culture we’ve discovered so far that hasn’t acknowledged this state of recognition; this state of awe; this very concept of existence for its very own sake. If there’s anything we know about humanity, after all this time and all this study, it’s that we all have an inherent appreciation for that from which we came, no matter how we perceive it – and a mutual respect for our own precarious condition.

And the most concise declaration of that realization is, at best and universally, enunciated by art.