An Apology for the Artist
Be a Little Crazier, Unleash Your Inner Artist!
Apology in the English language has a rather ambiguous meaning. Until the 1590s, it referred to the ancient Greek apologia (ἀπολογία), a speech in defence, but over time its meaning shifted towards the Latin form of apologia, an expression of regret for wrong done. The apology the title of this article refers to is the original Greek meaning, but why would the Artist be in need of my defence?
For centuries artists were protected by Patrons of the Arts who, albeit for mostly selfish reasons, allowed them their creative expression. Until the late 19th century, there was a widely held belief that art would somehow help or improve the world in some way. With the birth of modern abstract art, however, this belief gradually lost credence and the opposite idea took hold: art was now seen as an unnecessary luxury and of little use to most people.
It makes some sense that, with two World Wars and the Great Depression, financial security and not art was on people’s minds, but, to quote Ernest Hemingway, “a thousand years makes economics look silly while a work of art endures forever.”
Andy Warhol – 15 Minutes External
A good case in point here might be Andy Warhol. Much of his work is now questionable, but some of it definitely has eternal value. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Andy Warhol 15 Minutes Eternal exhibition in the Hong Kong Museum of Art and, standing in front of the original, now so iconic, Campbell’s Soup Cans paintings, I was truly moved. It was as if I could feel the presence of the Artist and was able to see through his eyes how consumerist economics had taken our world hostage. Yes it sounds fluffy, but I do believe that a true work of art is able to embody the observer.
Studio Roosegaarde – Social Design Lab
Today’s artists bring their views on the world much closer to our reality. Take the Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde for example. With his team of designers and engineers at the social design laboratory Studio Roosegaarde, he creates interactive designs exploring the dynamic relation between people, technology and space.
One of the studio’s earlier, but in my point of view more innovative projects, has been a sustainable dance floor. They created a dance floor of tiles that harness the ecstatic movements of the dancers, converting their kinetic energy to actual electricity. What if all movement could be turned into energy? Singapore is a busy place, just imagine the amount of people strolling along the city’s walkways everyday. Cultivating their kinetic energy would be more than enough to provide the whole city with the electricity it needs. The Artist had the vision, now it’s up to policy makers and urban planners to follow through.
Another project of Studio Roosegaarde has been the “Vacuum Cleaner for the Skies”, or Smog Tower, installed in a Beijing public park and currently the studio is running a similar project in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The Smog Tower utilises some basic principles of physics: buried coils of copper wire, charged with a relatively low voltage, magnetise and attract smog particles so that they drop down from the sky, purifying the air. The collected carbon particles are then made into pieces of jewellery. This again is visionary, instead of boring people to death with more regulation and threats, the number one headache of Beijing’s population is simply sucked from the sky and turned into art.
Daan Roosegaarde proves that art’s real function is about improving life and science, and this is why we need to have some more respect for our artists. They are the indispensable black sheep in a flock of managers and engineers who bleat loudly but lack the vision to lead.
Everyone is an Artist
I’d like to take this one step further, instead of waiting for art to embody us, we should all embody art. An argument can be made that everyone is an artist. A chef preparing a meal is an artist, a teacher delivering a well prepared lesson is an artist, a mother lovingly taking care of a child is an artist, everyone is an artist.
Until the onset of the Industrial Age, most people were kind of artists. They were artisans, working with their hands and, more importantly, thinking practically. Then factories needed workers to work without thinking, to be easily be replaceable and cheap. For over a century this worked. This industrial economy gave us structure: we went to school to learn the right skills, had a job with a steady career and then retired. However, that system doesn’t exist anymore, the Industrial Age is over.
At the moment we’re in a world in turmoil. Nobody really knows what will work in the New Economy, but we do know that what used to work doesn’t anymore. To change this situation back to our advantage, we need to reconnect to our practical and creative thinking skills. In the famous words of Apple Inc., “the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” So, maybe we should all be a little crazier and unleash our inner Artist.
[T]here you are.
