Art/is/try

Here’s a long and tedious debate to start your day: Can you separate the art from the artist?

In case you just got out of the Chauvet caves, the world of art has moved away from drawings to a wider implication of creativity, connection, and craziness.

Can this blog enjoy an independent existence, without having to be tied in with my identity and ordinariness?

When you see a urinal displayed in an art exhibition, are you thinking art, artist or are you, well, pissed?

Is it Justin Bieber or his music? And what’s up with this Mark Rothko dude and the GDP-of-a-small-country worth for his paintings? Does owning a Rothko make you a total dope or a complete dingbat. Do your choices show resonance with the art or the artist?

The debate had reared its ugliest head in the post-mod era. It is not about a urinal-induced-shock anymore as much as a dismal degeneration of hope.

The questions this time around are: is it appropriate to laugh at comedian Louis C.K’s jokes anymore? Can Goodwill Hunting still remain your favorite movie now that you know Harvey Weinstein produced it?

Where do you draw the line between art and the artist after this new paradigm of randiness?

Basically, what does liking a piece of work produced by these artists say about you? Does it mean you can’t separate the art from the artist without being twisted in the head yourself?

An inductive reasoning like that cripples art and makes producing art harder than it already is.

This does not mean anonymity should apply to more than just poems or crumby stuff like, ‘enjoying art for art’s sake.’

The artist is important. The artist serves as inspiration, incentive, and inventiveness. Artist spawns artists. We need them and they need us. Until of course, you find out one of them is a degenerate sleazebag.

The real debate is this: how can the art and artist coexist without destroying one another? This is the raging debate inside every artist. Can we love a piece of art and not another even when they have been produced by the same artist? Has the artist’s time as the hero come to an end?

This debate can find resolution only when we understand our own coexistence with art and artists.

Making this co-existence possible is hard work. Power and fame can put the co-existence to shame.

But we generate this power and fame?

We need to put human before hero. And art before artist. Not a separation as much as prioritization. This makes us open to learning, thoughtful in our critique, and not scream into a urinal.

Art is a perpetual slashing apart of the soul, the artist forever heart-broken. It’s not the artist. It never was. The artist is trying to survive. For art to thrive, we need to look at parts of us that need fixing and resuscitation. That’s the beginning. That’s the end.