The photograph above, “Balance”, © 2015 by William B. Watkins, can be viewed in a larger format in the Chiaroscuro section of the Image Gallery. On that page, just double-click on the image to view it in a large, slideshow mode.
L’art pour l’art is a French phrase that translates to English as “Art for art[‘s sake]” and may be more familiar, particularly to movie aficionados, in its Latin rendering Ars gratia artis (more on that later).
However it’s presented, this is a mighty motto, noble in scope, affirming that art stands on its own, with its own intrinsic value. That is to say, “art” isn’t just a vehicle for sentimentality, religion, commerce, morals, or politics.
I doubt that this would have ever developed as anyone’s motto, though, had there not been a widespread conflict about the purpose of art to begin. Otherwise, why defend art’s higher end?
When I speak to college students, I often quote from a play that I first encountered as a young college student myself. The words were spoken by a powerful character in a generally cheerless play called Kennedy’s Children, written by Robert Patrick in the 1970s. At the top of Act II, the character Sparger, an actor, comes forward and finally begins to speak his truth, which begins (as he contemplates the room around him), “I used to know a place that was better . . . .” He continues to describe the wonderland he had stepped into years earlier, “a hole-in-the-wall West Village coffeehouse . . . . [where] We did plays. We — I was one of “us” . . . .
For the character, it was a life-changing experience the night as a young man he first encountered that place and it was holy ground that he spoke of:
“It was the first place that did that. The first place where we got together and put on plays without worrying about whether or not we would be a hit or get a review or become a star or take it to Broadway or anything else . . . except whether we wanted to do it!”
As if that weren’t enough, he brings it home with that place’s true meaning for him:
“We got away with it by calling it a coffeehouse but what it was … was a temple.”
Sadly, art usually needs to be cloaked as or married with something else in order for us to “get away with it”. (Perhaps “commerce” cloaked as “art” is even more nauseating, though!) And there it is in a nutshell — the conflict that’s existed since about the first time anyone ever said “Hey, let’s put on a show!” — “art for the sake of art” versus “art for something else.”
The nature of what that “something else” is varies in where it resides on the continuum between benign and malignant. Theatre, for example, began in the ancient world allied with religion or politics. It was an outpouring to the gods, either to appease or to curry favors. It was a rallying point for promoting tribal unity or allegiances to particular leaders.
Many of us began our careers in the arts for similar reasons. We had something to say, something deep within our souls that yearned to be expressed. We wanted to be part of something — of a group — to belong, to be “one of ‘us’ ” and so we found our temples and cried out to our gods.
The conflict for Sparger began when other people moved into his temple — “failures and phonies . . . who just wanted to do whatever had been original and daring the year before” — and also with success that brought the need for approval and subsequently the need for more and more “product” for sale. He poignantly exclaims at one point: “We never needed critics before, we sold sandwiches!” Oh, the cry of the tender and the naïve!
There it is: The quandary between beginnings of art as religious expression — our outpourings to the gods, our cries that express something of our inner selves — and commercialism.
The reality is that most of what’s done in the performing arts is designed to put butts in seats. If art happens to happen that’s just so much gravy.
At some point, it boils down to something as basic as love versus having to eat. Or love versus the reality that other people may not have been in it for the same reasons we were, or at least — if they ever were — didn’t keep those values, weren’t holding fast to ars gratia artis.
Ars gratia artis? Yes, those familiar words, often seen (but perhaps uncontemplated) for nearly a century, have ringed around the head of the famous roaring lion announcing the start of an MGM production. Ah! Now you remember it! Lofty words about the purity of art trumpeted by one of the most commercially successful Hollywood studios in history, a major player in a multi-billion-dollar industry and major global exporter in the richest economy the world has ever known. An organization, like so many others, in the business of art, and, as a corporation, naturally concerned with the bottom line. It rather makes the noblest of words ring hollow.
But is there really such a thing? L’art pour l’art? Nineteenth century French novelist George Sand argued that such a thing is just a vacuous phrase, that art must be accessible enough for others to appreciate it. Put wryly: If art falls in a forest and there’s no one around to hear it, is it art? Sand would have found the idea of not worrying about anything except “whether we wanted to do it” juvenile.
It is a real conflict, though, for many, especially for young actors, singers, and those working in the visual arts: Do I “compromise” or do I remain “true”. At some point, those remaining in the latter camp run head on into this: Okay, so you’re an “artist” now. Now how do you eat? “Aye! There’s the rub”, I think it was Hamlet said. Do you want to sing well or do you want to make that currently-in-vogue screeching sound and earn a living? Can you sing well and earn a living? Do you want to play with subtlety and create characters of depth who are living breathing humans on the stage or do you want to pull out every obvious stop and create stick figures in garish crayon colors that may bring in the thrill-seeking and money-hemorrhaging? The reality is that the chances to earn a decent living get rarer the “purer” one is.
On rare occasions that which is truly “art” and commerce (or whatever other “compromise”) all come together in some tiny little segment of a vast Venn Diagram.
Closer to home, there is something irksome to me about having to “sell” one of our foundation programs to an educational institution on the basis of “studying music can help increase math scores” or “literacy improves when students participate in drama.” Yes, all that’s true and wonderful . . . but isn’t there value in simply improving the human being? Stimulating the imagination? Considering different perspectives? Isn’t art valuable as a thing unto itself?
What do you think?
We’ll return next time to the consideration of the exercises we began in our last blog post, “Towards an Interdisciplinary Approach”. I took a small side trip this time but one that is, I believe, significant and significantly related to the value of an interdisciplinary approach.
I still would like to hear from more of you about the exercises from that post, which you can view and take part in here, before moving ahead.
In the meantime, here are a few “survey” questions for you (remember, there are no “right” or “wrong” answers). Your identify will not be recorded or revealed to anyone else. After completing the questions, you can see how your answers compare with others taking the survey. Have fun!
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As always, this community only gets stronger with your participation, so please engage in the exercises and surveys and use the “comments” feature on each page. It’s great to hear from you.
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