Mining foreman R. Thornburg shows a small cage with a canary used for testing carbon monoxide gas in 1928. (George McCaa, U.S. Bureau of Mines)
…the nobility of our craft will always be rooted in two commitments, difficult to maintain: the refusal to lie about what one knows and the resistance to oppression… Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.” — Albert Camus acceptance speech, Nobel Peace Prize in literature
I am fascinated by the artist’s carriage and baggage. We come in chaotic shapes and forms, full of many interests, contradictions, yet we suffer a reputation that puts us in the company of bleary-eyed seers, or pie-in-the-sky romantics, modern-day Cassandras, or equal opportunity exploiters, interlopers, appropriators or just lazy people. And occasionally makers of nice things. We are not serious enough to be taken so. Artists can be annoying as hell when they pontificate. Tell me at what point in this meander did you say, “José is full of it.”
There is the one salutary and solitary thing that redeems us in the eyes of many. We are the canaries in the coal mines. Said Kurt Vonnegut, “I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts… That artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.”
What do you mean “we”? How did we get so lucky? The thought of choking and leaving this mortal coil after inhaling some noxious, real or metaphorical gas that only I or fellow travelers can discern in the ambient air because of our chosen profession, is not something to celebrate. I mean when you’re dead, you’re dead. But Vonnegut says it is the only good thing. And he was a sensitive guy.
To hell with that, even if full of romance and stuff. It’s an annoying viewpoint. Say we accept this accusation. We are not artists unless we are keeling over, in the process of warning the rest of humanity of a danger they could care less about. God forbid we miss the moment and stare too long at our navels and there she blows.
I’m going off the extreme, but talk about fruitless. No one really believes that do they? I mean we are artists after all, so sensitive we would collapse and roll over with just one big boo. But we persevere if for no other reason, then, there is strength in being misunderstood. There is affirmation in the way folk look when you explain a thought process behind an idea, that one time you had an idea that wasn’t an accident.
If we can’t even convey the mystery in making a work, what makes anyone think an artist is going to be listened to when their high-pitched song goes mute and their lifeless body folds into the shredded pieces of newspaper at the bottom of the cage? Please don’t line it with the obituary section. “Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide,” said the influential British psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott.
That makes sense. The thought of the sacrificial canary makes most of us want to hide. Whether artist or not. The quiet of the studio, the artist retreat. The den, the yard. The only place where everything makes sense. Even when it doesn’t, who cares? Some see the artist’s trade and studio as a lark. A retreat from reality. I see it as a place to pick the lint off my belly button and throw it back to the world without having to get out of my seat. Those opposed, a special place in hell awaits sentencing you to interpret any middle-school student’s cursive writing.
Gustave Flaubert said, “You can’t make art out of good intentions.” You can’t set out to make art that is strictly political. Not because it is difficult, but what is political art? Most times it’s art someone doesn’t want, or feels is not appropriate as a subject for art. Art should reflect our most noble impulses says someone that likes your work when it makes them feel good, hates it when it challenges them.
The thing is, no artist worth their salt sets out to be political, dogmatic, intransigent — difficult people throwing something “ugly” in the respectful serenity of the accepted curated worldview. But it is also true that no artist worth their salt sets out to avoid doing that. You might fall in love with brilliant, gaudy colors in a world that only wants drab greys, and browns. You’re a subversive, political artist. Why can’t you be happy with dull mauve? Make it fit above the couch and complement the furniture.
“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see,” said James Baldwin. I can get behind this 100%. It resolves all things at play when responding to a chaotic and purposeless world. I can paint monochromatic in a gaudy-embracing world. I can write nonsensical saccharine rhyming poems in a world demanding serious, measured critiques. Or vice versa. I can also bite heartily the hand that feeds me and not feel bad if I munch some digits, if only to make the point that we are all being devoured.
The commitment to tell the truth and to fight oppression is a simple dictum that has become part of our social contract. Question authority, fight the power, look out for the man. Better the artist that questions than the artist that answers. Our marching orders? We will sing like canaries in a coal mine and reserve the right to sing gibberish like lunatics off key and never on time.
“I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.” — Marcel Duchamp
