ART MATTERS: ENGORGED MATERIALISM AND THE CRISIS IN CREATIVITY
Engorged materialism signals the decline of a society. Centuries should have warned us about this. Nero fiddled while the Roman Empire fell-an advanced society destroyed as a result of the hedonism and greed in which it wallowed. Pigs at a full trough do not see the butcher advancing.
More and more the desire for things seems to preoccupy society. Disadvantage is increasingly measured by what we have or don’t have relative to our neighbour even though compared to most others we could be rich in possessions beyond belief. In an affluent community this is really evident. An outward display of wealth or upward mobility is a prerequisite to social acceptability, and the elite late-model vehicle, the sculpted body, the face as free of lines as a newly ironed shirt, and other such superfluous accoutrements, constitute the value we place on our lives. Wealth is externalized in ownership. Quality of life has become a measurable phenomenon and the human values by which we live seem to exist in the realm of the taken-for-granted.
Yet a person’s inner world, of personal perception, of values and emotions, is essential not only to their own quality of life, but to life itself. To live life with reference to this inner world is to live with integrity; to act according to external imperatives simply because they represent the socially approved norm is to undermine what it is to be truly human. For Jean-Paul Sartre, to have integrity is to be an integrated human being, that is, to act having regard to the whole that we and our human environment represent. It is to live with awareness and to act in response to this.
The lives of artists are more likely to be lived in such a way for it seems that reflection on and engagement of self with their work is intrinsic to the process of creation. But the creative act should not be the only means to mindfully engage self in living. It should rather serve as a blueprint for living a life which is creative simply through the way we engage with it.
Yet the current environment is not sympathetic to this modus operandi. The market economy depends for its survival on the objectification of what is valued. Direct human interchange has been replaced by commodity relationship; that is, either through using products as a substitute for expression of human emotion, or by becoming a human commodity, an item of exchange or an image for display. Advertising actively encourages both of these things. Love becomes a desirable product, a new car or the latest toy, and the person becomes an “object of desire” in conformity with the images portrayed in the mass media.
The market place has also begun to appropriate language in order to meet its own needs. Thus, the artist, who represents the lateral, creative thinker, the one able to articulate and show the value of the inner world, becomes a production worker in what is now called a “creative industry”. Art becomes commodified, and although the result of a heartfelt and often laborious creative process, transformed into a product, an “investment”, or a status symbol. An ugly example is an art auction house show where two of the dealers featured have no interest in art work beyond its salability.
How can an artist, whose work arises from a place deep in heart or mind, be adequately or justly described as part of an ‘industry’? This misrepresents the nature of the work and reduces it to a thing-in-itself which, in Sartre’s sense, has no meaning beyond the immediately apprehensible, rather than that which is the culmination of a creative process invested with the riches of mind and spirit.
The difficulty in living outside societal norms, no matter how considered, or even unequivocal this act, is the experience of alienation, of being a stranger in one’s own community or culture. To be alienated can sometimes be devastating in its effects. Marx described some of the causes and features of alienation in “The Communist Manifesto”. How many young artists have we talked to whose parents, with concern for their child’s future, have tried to persuade or coerce them into “getting a real job”? As though the arts are peripheral to the real business of living when their place in contributing to our culture and our cultural significance in the world, is in fact, tremendous.
The need to negotiate this tension between the outer world, of commodity consciousness, and the inner world of self, from which human values arise, presents a real challenge to both artist and society. It can be done only in a climate of increased understanding that while economic necessities require some compromise in work they should not be expected to direct a change in the values that inform the artist’s work. For those values are what give heart, hope and raison d’etre to humanity. They are what Dylan Thomas would describe as “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”
Engorged materialism signals the decline of a society. Centuries should have warned us about this. Nero fiddled while the Roman Empire fell-an advanced society destroyed as a result of the hedonism and greed in which it wallowed. Pigs at a full trough do not see the butcher advancing.
More and more the desire for things seems to preoccupy society. Disadvantage is increasingly measured by what we have or don’t have relative to our neighbour even though compared to most others we could be rich in possessions beyond belief. In an affluent community this is really evident. An outward display of wealth or upward mobility is a prerequisite to social acceptability, and the elite late-model vehicle, the sculpted body, the face as free of lines as a newly ironed shirt, and other such superfluous accoutrements, constitute the value we place on our lives. Wealth is externalized in ownership. Quality of life has become a measurable phenomenon and the human values by which we live seem to exist in the realm of the taken-for-granted.
Yet a person’s inner world, of personal perception, of values and emotions, is essential not only to their own quality of life, but to life itself. To live life with reference to this inner world is to live with integrity; to act according to external imperatives simply because they represent the socially approved norm is to undermine what it is to be truly human. For Jean-Paul Sartre, to have integrity is to be an integrated human being, that is, to act having regard to the whole that we and our human environment represent. It is to live with awareness and to act in response to this.
The lives of artists are more likely to be lived in such a way for it seems that reflection on and engagement of self with their work is intrinsic to the process of creation. But the creative act should not be the only means to mindfully engage self in living. It should rather serve as a blueprint for living a life which is creative simply through the way we engage with it.
Yet the current environment is not sympathetic to this modus operandi. The market economy depends for its survival on the objectification of what is valued. Direct human interchange has been replaced by commodity relationship; that is, either through using products as a substitute for expression of human emotion, or by becoming a human commodity, an item of exchange or an image for display. Advertising actively encourages both of these things. Love becomes a desirable product, a new car or the latest toy, and the person becomes an “object of desire” in conformity with the images portrayed in the mass media.
The market place has also begun to appropriate language in order to meet its own needs. Thus, the artist, who represents the lateral, creative thinker, the one able to articulate and show the value of the inner world, becomes a production worker in what is now called a “creative industry”. Art becomes commodified, and although the result of a heartfelt and often laborious creative process, transformed into a product, an “investment”, or a status symbol. An ugly example is an art auction house show where two of the dealers featured have no interest in art work beyond its salability.
How can an artist, whose work arises from a place deep in heart or mind, be adequately or justly described as part of an ‘industry’? This misrepresents the nature of the work and reduces it to a thing-in-itself which, in Sartre’s sense, has no meaning beyond the immediately apprehensible, rather than that which is the culmination of a creative process invested with the riches of mind and spirit.
The difficulty in living outside societal norms, no matter how considered, or even unequivocal this act, is the experience of alienation, of being a stranger in one’s own community or culture. To be alienated can sometimes be devastating in its effects. Marx described some of the causes and features of alienation in “The Communist Manifesto”. How many young artists have we talked to whose parents, with concern for their child’s future, have tried to persuade or coerce them into “getting a real job”? As though the arts are peripheral to the real business of living when their place in contributing to our culture and our cultural significance in the world, is in fact, tremendous.
The need to negotiate this tension between the outer world, of commodity consciousness, and the inner world of self, from which human values arise, presents a real challenge to both artist and society. It can be done only in a climate of increased understanding that while economic necessities require some compromise in work they should not be expected to direct a change in the values that inform the artist’s work. For those values are what give heart, hope and raison d’etre to humanity. They are what Dylan Thomas would describe as “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”
