"Arts and Entertainment"
...why we cannot trivialize art without trivializing ourselves
Enter the term “Arts and Entertainment” into your favorite search engine and behold: you’ll find newspaper after newspaper each with its own section thus titled, and then, further down in the search results you’ll even find programs of study in university business schools for Arts and Entertainment Management.
Isn’t it good to know that The Arts are alive and well-managed? But here’s the thing: Are they? Are they really? Does it matter anymore?
Who was the last artist to show up and make a difference in any but the “art world”? Where are the artists whose statements are of general, rather than specific interest? Well, there are more than a few. But we’ll get to that.
I’m now re-reading Create Dangerously: The Power and Responsibility of the Artist, a 2018 translation of a speech given by Albert Camus in 1957. It’s a slim little book — perfect gift item. And that’s what I bought it for. Then I kept it.
In his speech, Camus discusses the danger of the “art for art’s sake” mindset as a blind alley that ultimately reduces the position of art in society. “Art” becomes in the public mind the equivalent of a watercolor landscape in a hotel room. The whole idea that art matters in life is for many people reduced to something of a clowns-on-black-velvet-genre joke. As soon as we reduce art to decoration, to a superfluous add-on while real life and seriousness happen elsewhere, art is finished. And with it, Camus argues, so is civilization and human dignity.
Here’s part of what Camus says about the personal side of it:
“Every publication is a deliberate act, and that act makes us vulnerable to the passions of a century that forgives nothing. And so, the question is not to know whether taking action is or is not damaging to art. The question, to everyone who cannot live without art and all it signifies, is simply to know — given the strict controls of countless ideologies (so many cults, such solitude!) how the enigmatic freedom of creation remains possible.” (p. 6)
But the central point of Camus’ speech seems to be that there is always a social context for art and the artist, and that any attempt to dissociate these two will result in damage to both art and society.
“It is not a question of knowing whether, while seeking justice, we will manage to preserve freedom. It is a question of knowing that without freedom, we will accomplish nothing, but will lose, simultaneously, future justice and the beauty of the past. Freedom alone can save humankind from isolation, and isolation in its many forms encourages servitude. But art, because of the inherent freedom that is its very essence, as I have tried to explain, unites, wherever tyranny divides.” (pp. 40-41)
So now, more than 60 years after Camus gave his speech, it seems appropriate to ask ourselves: How are we doing? I guess the fact that there’s still any space devoted to art in modern dailies is a positive sign. But why “arts and entertainment”? My instincts for language suggest that the juxtaposition of these words on the page translates into a kind of mental juxtaposition, an association of the arts and entertainment in people’s minds.
My concern is that this association suggests that the function of art is to “entertain”. It’s hard not to imagine that at that point, art ceases to matter so very much. This pairing, this juxtaposition of “arts and entertainment,” this close association of terms, seems alarmingly close to the very trend that Camus was warning us about.
I’ve said for a long time that the most highly paid poets in the world probably work anonymously in advertising agencies and PR firms. There, one could say, art flourishes, with the jackhammer of money applied to the sculpting of public opinion. But is it art, really?
In all ages, money and power have had an uncomfortable relationship with art, probably because of art’s intrinsic relationship, as Camus points out, with freedom. The tendency on the part of the powerful seems to be to use art to further consolidate or expand political and economic control, and to persecute anyone whose creative endeavors undercut that goal.
Mozart and Michelangelo both had to deal with the power structures of their times to bring their works to the world. Few people today would criticize them because of this association, or say that the world would be better off if they’d gone unfunded. But in all ages there has also been suppression of art and artists whose products called into question the power structures and associated mores of their times. I recently learned about the challenges of being an 18th century writer of homoerotic fiction, for example. It was easy to run afoul of civil authorities.
That’s why the term “arts and entertainment” is in some ways a genius branding move. Among fine artists, wealthy patrons can still pick their favorites, but on the whole — even with a work like Hamilton — art seems largely to be a game for rich people, while the masses are left to consume “entertainment”. There are plenty of exceptions, however, and as recorded versions of Hamilton eventually came out, the work could reach broader audiences who balked at $300 tickets to live performances. Additionally, cartoonists Matt Groenig and R. Crumb come to mind as examples of artists who started on the edgy fringe of local rags where critiques of power and conventionality are still possible, but who moved into much more general public recognition, their art surviving in socially important ways.
There are many artists today whose works make a difference. I just learned of the work of Kadir Nelson, for example. Barbara Kingsolver just won a Pulitzer. There’s painter Andrea Kowch, whose work my wife introduced me to in the last year or so. Take your pick: music, dance, literature, you name it…there’s all kinds of interesting stuff going on.
And, we can make it happen. We can create.
Art is by its nature, alive. It’s happening. But let’s also remember that our relationship with the products of creative endeavor is ours to shape. If all we do is giggle at a social critique and then relegate it to the perennial trash bin, “entertainment,” or read something like this, say “huh” and move on, or otherwise consume but not digest it, we’re not completing the artistic transaction. It’s what we bring to our reading, viewing or listening, it’s how deeply we let it in, it’s how we allow art to change us and then carry that project forward that ultimately makes art both personally and socially relevant.
That’s the freedom Camus was writing about. Both as producers and experiencers of art, much is still possible. As artists we can start exactly where we are and with the materials and budgets we have. As appreciators and experiencers, art can still eclipse entertainment in the “arts and entertainment” mindset if we continue discovering and demonstrating its value.