Art rules
This morning I saw an article on my Yahoo News headlines, which I’m not going to link to, since it will soon be a dead link, as is what happens with Internet news articles. It was about how a new painting is causing quite an uproar. Naturally, I was interested. The painting is called “Blessed Art Thou”, by the very-talented Kate Kretz. It’s of Angelina Jolie surrounded by her three kids, but she’s portrayed in the style of the Virgin Mary, holding Brad’s baby, bookended by the other two toddlers as cherubim, all standing on a cloud in heaven. And heaven is set over a Wal-Mart interior.
Now it is clearly obvious as to what some find offensive about this. Some consider it blasphemous. But the artist is making a statement as to how we have come to deify celebrity in this little culture of ours. She’s merely pointing out what we have already done. Celebrities are paid so much money because we're the ones who pay to see their movies, watch their shows on TV, buy their albums, watch and read their interviews on TV and in magazines. It’s our new national pastime. We’re creating the demand, and the industries are only too happy to supply, since they’re making a tidy profit. Ms. Kretz is saying something that goes a little something like this: celebrities have become to our culture what the divine was to cultures of the past—something perfect, something legendary, inaccessible to ordinary humans, something to be in awe of, (and therefore) something to worship. Here it is, in her own words.
This is the sanctity of art. Art is something that should cause us to think, to identify and re-examine our ideals, individually and as a culture. Is this phenomenon something that we’re comfortable with? Do we even realize that we’re doing it? Sometimes our perspective is too myopic. Sometimes things just evolve (or de-volve) in a certain direction, so slowly that we don’t perceive it happening until it’s revealed by someone who does see it. And since most of our culture is now consumer-driven pop culture, and since we lead such busy lives that we don’t get to discuss these things with friends or family regularly, and since we don’t have community wise men and women to consult with on a day-to-day basis, we must get our wisdom from somewhere. Sometimes it comes from art. Art says, “Hey, pay attention!” We were made to think—it makes us human beings, not lemmings. And sometimes we need to push through the first or even the second impressions that we get when we see a piece (or play act or choreography or film scene), because often those impressions are knee-jerk reactions that have been socially-impressed on us. It’s important to dig deep and think about what our own genuine reactions are; sometimes they will coincide with our first impressions, but sometimes not. This is the only way that we find out what is truly in our own internal codex, the one written in our skin (I smell a painting coming on...).
Now it is clearly obvious as to what some find offensive about this. Some consider it blasphemous. But the artist is making a statement as to how we have come to deify celebrity in this little culture of ours. She’s merely pointing out what we have already done. Celebrities are paid so much money because we're the ones who pay to see their movies, watch their shows on TV, buy their albums, watch and read their interviews on TV and in magazines. It’s our new national pastime. We’re creating the demand, and the industries are only too happy to supply, since they’re making a tidy profit. Ms. Kretz is saying something that goes a little something like this: celebrities have become to our culture what the divine was to cultures of the past—something perfect, something legendary, inaccessible to ordinary humans, something to be in awe of, (and therefore) something to worship. Here it is, in her own words.
This is the sanctity of art. Art is something that should cause us to think, to identify and re-examine our ideals, individually and as a culture. Is this phenomenon something that we’re comfortable with? Do we even realize that we’re doing it? Sometimes our perspective is too myopic. Sometimes things just evolve (or de-volve) in a certain direction, so slowly that we don’t perceive it happening until it’s revealed by someone who does see it. And since most of our culture is now consumer-driven pop culture, and since we lead such busy lives that we don’t get to discuss these things with friends or family regularly, and since we don’t have community wise men and women to consult with on a day-to-day basis, we must get our wisdom from somewhere. Sometimes it comes from art. Art says, “Hey, pay attention!” We were made to think—it makes us human beings, not lemmings. And sometimes we need to push through the first or even the second impressions that we get when we see a piece (or play act or choreography or film scene), because often those impressions are knee-jerk reactions that have been socially-impressed on us. It’s important to dig deep and think about what our own genuine reactions are; sometimes they will coincide with our first impressions, but sometimes not. This is the only way that we find out what is truly in our own internal codex, the one written in our skin (I smell a painting coming on...).
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