How Do We Stand Up?

I was at a bar on Thursday night with my younger brother, an art student at Pratt here in Brooklyn. We were discussing our respective modes of artistic expression (his visual, mine written) and I was trying to explain a notion that the visual arts are more about human feeling than about concrete ideas. I used the painting here (The 3rd of May, 1808, by Goya) as an example, and said that it captures, to me, "the flickering flame of human defiance in the face of despair." My brother liked the phrase enough that he wrote it down and later sent it to me. As prose, it might be a bit much, but there's something to the notion that's been on my mind since.

In that painting, the man in the white shirt seems torn between fear of death and a proud resignation: I did what I thought I should do for my country, and now the bill is due. I am struck by how hard it is to follow your conscience in the face of forces beyond your control. Here, in the midst of deadly retribution being dealt out by the French troops, we see the toll taken on one man, and realize that the dreams, memories, skills and relationships that make up his existence are about to be snuffed out.

How many of us, in that moment, would be willing to renounce our ideals, our causes, for a chance to walk away alive? And that, I think, is why despair is always present for us: no matter how much we believe in a cause and are theoretically willing to sacrifice for it, for most of us, we despair of the thought of death (and especially a futile death) and know we may not follow through on the sacrifice when it matters. And yet, there is that flickering flame, the possibility that we may be able to believe in something bigger long enough to do what is right. For the man in the painting, he may in that moment wish to take back his rebellion against the French and live a peaceful life, but he made his decision to fight the day before (a scene Goya also painted) and now it is too late to turn back. His heroism, if it happened, happened out of the context of the painting. A believer in God may hold to faith not knowing it will lead to his martyrdom, but that makes him no less of a martyr when he dies for it.

I write this blog to think about tomorrow, and indeed I question how human defiance will manifest itself in the future. It isn't that people are unwilling to stand up for what they think is right, but rather that our systems (social, political, economic) are so complex that it is hard to tell exactly what the problems are and what should be done about them. On the whole, this is a good thing: in complex societies, there is room to carve out your little sphere of righteousness, and walk away from what it is that you think is wrong. But it also leaves the individual unsure of how to act morally, and leads to the possibility that despair will creep in, a despair that we are powerless to make our society better, or to address the wrongs that we see.

The End of Greatness

Would Ghengis Khan have conquered most of Asia and a big chunk of Europe if he had been able to vacation in the South of France? Would Tolstoy or Dostoevsky have toiled over thousand page novels if they could have gained fame and fortune from an Oprah's Book Club sticker? Would the leaders of the American Revolution have stuck with their hard path if the UN had existed to intervene and 'talk it out'?

These are, perhaps, stupid questions. At least, on their face, they are unanswerable. But they point to something I think is important: the great reduction of greatness in all walks of life in our modern times. Whatever the realm you choose to inspect, whether statecraft or art or science, we seem to be suffering, in the last 70 years or so, from a distinct absence of greatness. One could argue that we might recognize greatness in some of our contemporaries only once time has passed, but I think we'll find, even decades from now, that this time will be marked by a dearth of the extraordinary. Why? Because the luxuries and temptations of modern society sap the most talented of their will to punish themselves to scale the mountains which they might be capable of ascending.

Society has become so good at recognizing and celebrating talent that it rewards the gifted before their talents have matured. The intelligent, the creative, the visionary: for the most part they are absorbed into the upper levels of privilege before they have had the chance to achieve true greatness. If a talented 20- or 30-something is whisked off to Cannes or Miami or given the funds to afford a lavish lifestyle in the great cities of the world, chances are they are going to be diverted from whatever greatness they still had to achieve.

I can't imagine an easy solution to this problem. We just have to hope that later generations will be better able to resist the lures of a well-developed material culture, and will once again be willing to walk the hard road to high achievement.

The Untalented and the Fearful

About a week ago, I saw some truly lousy modern dance. It went as these things often do, with odd costumes, occasionally amusing visual gags, brief moments of coordinated physical movement, and an audience that often tittered at what one could only guess were inside jokes. And so my mind wandered, a bit.

I found myself trying to determine if the dancers had talent in any discernible way. Did they, through combination of native ability and hard work, demonstrate high aptitude, if I took what they were doing at face value? I thought to other modern dance performances I have seen, and in subtle ways, I thought they were probably in fact a bit less skilled then many of their peers. To put it another way, I thought other dancers I have seen would have performed the same routine with more grace, more flair, and more humor. But those differences are minimized by the art form itself, which has sacrificed everything but novelty.

I don't mean to bitch about modern art, or not only to do so. Other writers, including one of my favorites, have done that much better than I can. But I mean to question if the sad state of modern art forms (I'd include painting, poetry, dance, classical music composition, and much of theater and architecture in this bucket) have evolved so as to coddle the talented and shelter the talentless.

If judgments about art's quality are subjective, then it is awfully mean to tell anyone their art stinks. So you don't, and the poor artists don't get weeded out. But the talented have no incentive to hone their skills, either, because that's not how they will be judged. They will be judged by novelty, their flair for self-promotion, and whether they master the language and the symbols of the in-crowd. Showing too much raw skill just might turn everyone else off.

And so the state of art is perfect for our self-esteem culture. The talentless are given a fair chance to beat the gifted. If someone rejects your work, it is not because you stink, it is because they don't get it. You don't need to master what your predecessors knew because it is old hat, and all anyone in your crowd cares about is what's next. Jackson Pollock is relevant as a cultural marker, but a young painter cannot learn what he needs by studying his predecessor's technique, because he can never fling paint at a canvas better than Pollock. The attempt would just be derivative. Maybe splatter a canvas with your own blood or desecrate a religious icon.

Great art, even mediocre art, requires deeply understanding and at least partially mastering what the public standard for quality is, and then either building on it or turning it on its ear. Modern art has build a Tower of Babel where the insiders only pretend to understand each others' gibberish, and then pat each other on the back in celebration of the wonderful new language each has created.