Is the job of artists to reflect the times we live in so as to make our fellow citizens aware of the historical mistakes we as a society may be repeating? Should artists be confronting us with our greed, stupidity, and all the other deadlies we constantly commit? Or should we be celebrating the slow progress of conscious human awareness? How can an artist distinguish between their own perception of reality and what is actually going on out there? How do we know if our sins are more numerous and deterministic than our saving graces?

The post-moderns, post-post moderns and other recent schools answer these questions by assuming that we can’t perceive what is real because reality is made up of momentary impressions that we superimpose on the world around us. Some might even suggest that there is no independent reality, there are only disparate individual perceptions created by cultural norms, personal histories, situations and emotions. By this logic, artists cannot depict reality as it is an illusion and they must avoid attempting to impose their personal understanding on their audience as this is dishonest and even unfair.

This leads us to the second part of the question posed by Barnes: is art a concentration of reality? If one accepts the logic outlined above, then reality cannot be depicted, let alone concentrated. But perhaps artists, through their craft, discipline and experience, are able to distill experience into a hyper-real depiction of the world around them. This is the case in many non-Western cultures and was the case in earlier European cultures before the pursuit of realism became the measure of excellence. In First Nations cultures on the west coast of British Columbia, artists capture the history, stories and spirit of their culture rather than individual emotional states or experiences.

The power of a work such as this can’t be denied and its concentrated energy negates the idea that art can’t depict reality. But this is a reality on a different scale that the one debated by the post-moderns. This is the type of reality that Westerners lost sight of as scientific reductionism took all our attention.

Early Europeans also used powerful images to concentrate and communicate the essence of their culture, and this has been explored in an earlier blog . One such powerful image is the sculpture below:

These works provided a schematized, abstract rendition of human traits, in this case, fertility (mother-goddess). They were depicted in stages of pregnancy, giving birth or showing maternal affection, parts of life independent of individual artistic bias.

Is art a superior substitute for reality?   Can we attain the same level of understanding from an excellent novel by Julian Barnes as we can by exposing ourselves to life in all its variation, wonder & squalor? Does a well-written novel, riveting play or mind-altering painting represent a more refined and accurate conception of reality than the lived experience of a non-artist?

This topic can be diverted by the issue of digital vs. non-digital reality and the current worry that for many, if not most of us, “real” reality has become a dull reflection of what we can find in our devices. Is a well-written novel, riveting play or mind-altering painting intrinsically more valuable than an hour or two on Facebook, Snapchat or TikTok? If we accept that there is no “real” reality anyway, it’s quality doesn’t make any difference.  But if we don’t accept this, we might suggest that an undifferentiated virtual world with no limitations or standards is a formless, dumbed-down alternative to a well-written novel, riveting play or mind-altering painting. These collate societal  experiences into artworks that don’t substitute for reality but distill it into something greater than all of our busy minds. So in that way, yes, good art is a superior substitute for mindlessly getting through the day.

But the last part of Barnes’ question is the big one: is art just a beguiling irrelevance? Is it defensible to be working diligently to create artworks in the context of world hunger, war, climate change, mass migrations, mass species extinction etc.?

Shouldn’t we all down pens, paintbrushes, ballet shoes and violins to distribute needed supplies to exhausted refugees? Remove invasive species from nearby wildlife habitat? Sit in front of our legislature with a placard demanding a sustainable future?

We artists defend our practices by arguing that in a world of greed & violence, the arts preserve the best part of humanity and provide an alternative paradigm to getting & spending. This doesn’t really answer the big question, but it will have to do for now.

The post A Superior Substitute for Life first appeared on Marion-Lea Jamieson, Artist.

A. S. Byatt’s last book of short stories, Medusa’s Ankles, was a joy to read after having waded through a slew of glib novels by young writers seeking to take liberties with the form without having mastered it to begin with. The introduction to Byatt’s book is written by David Mitchell who describes the author as an art historian whose scholarly knowledge of art informs her prose. He says her characters act as conduits for ideas about making art, looking at art and art’s centrality to the mind and the world. For instance she incorporates ideas from John Ruskin “…from whom art lecturers claim professional descent“.

Few writers, Mitchell says, embed theory in their fiction with Byatt’s boldness and success, with theories of art illustrated by the stories that house them. He uses the word “Ekphrasis” which describes a work of visual art used as a literary device. I’m delighted by the revelation that there is a word for an area I’ve been trying to talk about in the halting prose of a non-writer. But Byatt’s prose “bestows dignity upon art in all its manifestations.”

In the short story, Jesus in the House of Martha and Mary, she has the character Valasquez say, “the world is full of light and life and the true crime is not to be interested in it“.  That’s an interesting idea – artists are simply those people interested enough in light and life to devote their lives to translating it into a visual, literary or some other communicable form.

One of the collection’s outstanding stories  is “A Lamia in the Cevennes” in which an artist with a creative block falls in love, not with a mythological seductress, but with art itself. 

As in all her stories, this one is in constant dialogue with the readers, asking, What is art? Why do we need it? What does it do for us? The protagonist, Bernard, asks, “Why bother? Why does this matter so much? What difference does it make to anything if I solve this blue and just start again? I could just sit down and drink wine. I could go and be useful in a cholera camp in Columbia or Ethiopia. Why bother to render the transparency in solid paint on a bit of board? I could just stop. He could not.” “Art is a mercurial lover” says Mitchell in the Introduction. “The artists can no more ignore their art than a character can change the story they appear in, or a Greek hero outwit the fates.”

There are many other authors who wrestle with the point of making art. In his novel, Elizabeth Finch, Julian Barnes asks,”Is art a depiction of reality, a concentration of it, a superior substitute for it, or just a beguiling irrelevance?” In the case of a novel, it is easier to understand how the writer, an expert at communicating in language, can help readers to make sense of the world, to understand it and our place in it. But what about the writers’ or artists’ larger responsibilities to society as a whole? Whether a writer, or any artist must directly address and take a strong position on political developments in his/her country is explored at some length and with great delicacy by Colm Toibin in his novel about the life of Thomas Mann, The Magician. In the novel, Mann (and Toibin) concludes that artists are damned if they do or don’t take a political stand and by extension, suggests that an artist’s first and primary responsibility is to his/her work. He also concludes that barbarism is never far beneath the surface and that art is always the first of its victims. So artists keep alive a sense of grace and beauty that balances violence and brutality.

These great artists insist that creating artworks is a balance to violence, help us see and make sense of the world and I am grateful that they have defended making art for art’s sake. Thanks Antonia, Julian, Colm, Thomas and all the rest.

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