[Previous entry: "My "Fifteen Minutes of Fame""] [Next entry: "Beyond The Money – Beyond The Painting"]
03/13/2006: "WHERE HAVE WE COME FROM?" by Walter King
As you may have noticed I’m very intrigued by where the urge to make art comes from and how it has thread its way through our history. Based on certain facts, artifacts and theories many scholars assume that prehistoric artists made their images , ecorated their tools and bodies for several reasons. Two of the primary reasons seem to be for religious and spiritual reasons as well as for community celebrations. Along with the first urge to create comes a number of ideas including prayer, communion with the spirit world or universe/nature, etc.. The painting on the wall of a mammoth being brought down by several hunters may have happened before the fact as a kind of blessing…a visualization of what the hunters would like to see happen…a kind of hunting magic! My mother always told me two things as I was growing up. She called me the absent minded professor because I was a very philosophical child. And later when my artistic talents began to emerge she often told me that one day I would be a world famous artist.
Well, whether she intended it or not these things have become self fulfilling prophecies…Not that I’m so world famous but certainly I’ve exhibited a number of times in Europe, in South America and the internet has brought my work and my name to thousands of people around the world. As well I did in fact become a professor of art. And this is something I would never have predicted myself given my dislike of school and the educational process from grade school through High School. Were these cave paintings perceived as bringing good luck to the hunt?
The second primal urge happens once the hunters are successful and the tribe had shared the kill. Then came the celebration! We know that primitive tribes still follow practices and rituals that are thousands of years old. Did they decorate themselves like the spirits they believed were watching over them? Did they participate in ceremonial rituals? Did they celebrate the greatness of the hunters, the luck of the tribe or the benevolence of the tribal gods and spirits by recreating the hunt in dance, retell the tale in song, or make new images on the cave wall, body decorations, or markings on tools and weapons to mark the time in which they were so well fed and happy?
We know that some artifacts like tools and weapons have images engraved or inscribed in such a way to suggest a kind of keeping of a calendar. Certain animals only appear in certain areas at specific times of the year…in certain sasons. These tools may have been a way of keeping track of those times. Other items were carved to keep track of menstrual cylces. And while I classify this as a subcategory under celebration/community it is in fact the beginning of a science of sorts. One that is done for the good of the tribe, hence the sub-category. It is also a sort of history. I always find it amazing that such practices were carried out at such primordial moments in the history of the race. These practices have been traced all the way back to Paleolithic times as I recall. I have far more respect for those minds and spirits we so readily characterize as ignorant brutes.And these practices have continued through our history and reappear again and again in our societal forms from the smallest rainforest tribes in Brazil to the national and international celebrations broadcast by the media and other high technology even today. The fantastic, imaginative and creatively artistic costumes of the opening ceremonies of the Olympics are a wonderful example of a ritual that has taken place since the beginnings of our history. It is an act of community…in this case the World community.
Well, OK then…if we accept these two primal urges (and I’m not being terribly scholarly about this…just going by the memory of so many things I’ve read over the years- after all, I’m not an archeologist or and anthropologist, I’m only an artist and should be set right by someone who has done original or at least more scholarly research if I‘m making false statements) it seems to me that nearly at the same time as these two primal urges comes what I might call a secondary or following urge…one that is based on the observation of what the first two motivations have called into being. And that is the status of the artist! If an artist makes a cave painting that brings (at least that is perceived to bring) such good luck to the tribe, isn’t that artist then given the status of one with special powers? The term shaman or medicine man or witch doctor comes to mind. And in the beginning this person may well have also been one of the team of hunters himself. But combined with the heroic hunt is this other practice of bringing the attention of the spirits for the good of the tribe. A certain reverence may well have been attributed.
And along with the status of the artist comes the status of the collector. Now I mentioned in another blog about the wall paintings in the Mogollan range in New Mexico that wall paintings could not be purchased or traded so no commercial value would have been involved. These would have been done purely for the good of the community and maybe even a larger community which included other tribes or hunting parties that often passed through the territory. But smaller portable objects like tools and weapons might be traded at what we would consider a commercial value. So maybe our hunter/artist makes a trading trip to a distant area and brings along some of his tools with his magic markings on it. Say and antler used for digging and bashing in the heads of animals during a hunt or even in protection of the tribe against more aggressive rival tribes. In this distant land are tribes who have found that flint is valuable in tool making. So the antler tool is traded for a number of flints.
The new owner of the antler tool, a tool that perhaps is unknown in the new territory, takes it home along with the stories of the great magic it gives in the hunt and the protection of the tribe. And soon the new owner finds the truth of the power of the antler tool. He is able to more easily dig a fire pit, or bash the brains out of a mountain goat once it has been brought down. Or even uses it in battle to protect his family and tribe. Now both the artist/hunter and the collector have gained a new status. And the tool itself may well gain its own kind of magical status so that the owner, whoever it is, is bathed in the magic of the special tool. Now the tool becomes a kind of talisman and quite possibly the new owner is given an even higher status as the chief of the tribe. And upon his death lets imagine that the antler tool is handed to his son who takes the reins of the tribe. Eventually they will learn to make their own antler tools and the original will be hidden away and only brought out on special occasions, celebrations and crisis when the tribe needs spiritual magic to help them. Do we not find this same principle carried on throughout history in the royal robes, carved thrones and bejeweled crowns and sculpted and gilded scepters handed done from king to king?
So, if I may make a pictorial metaphor, now we have a kind of three legged tripod in which communion with the spiritual world, bonding of the community and status of both the artist and the collector holds up the practice of art making. The idea of spirituality has expanded to include beauty as an ideal. The idea of community has expanded to take in the possibility of dissent, protest or a kind of moralizing and chastising of the community (for its own good) which goes beyond simply celebrating the good fortune of the tribe but comes from the same basic urge.And if you look at the artifacts found in museums around the world you soon realize that the beautiful ceramic glazing and imaging techniques developed on the kraters, urns, jars and bowls of various societies in which water, oils, food stuffs and even scrolls and codexes were sold and stored one realizes that commercial labeling on cans and jars, boxes and plastic wrapped products dates back thousands of years and that it has always been considered art! I think all too often we argue most over the third leg of the art tripod. Can we imagine a time in the future when the wraps and labels we so quickly throw into the waste basket might show up in museums as a cultural history of our times?
Don’t laugh. It is already happening. Many museums collect the art of industrial and package design, graphic design and illustration. Most of us do not consider the decorations and expressions of pop culture to be art. Or at best we make the distinction between high art and low art. While those among us who are pure materialists and practicing atheists try to argue that art may not be at all spiritual, that beauty is simply an electrochemical response to certain mathematical arrangements of color, line and shape…you know those harmonies that strike a chord…still, many artists and admirers use spiritual terms almost blithely when speaking (sometimes directly and sometimes elliptically) of the art they make or admire. The fact that museums and state collections (the royal jewels for example ) exist seems to support the idea of art as a kind of celebration of the tribe and community. I’ve never been to a city, town or hamlet that didn’t have some kind of collection of their cultural history that didn’t include art or artifacts.
But we can easily argue that we either become too greedy and commercial about our art to the point that art avarice seems to cancel out the first two urges. And who among us artists haven’t moaned and groaned that we are not given enough reward and status for the work we do. The first argument leads to a kind of Bohemian purity. Joni Mitchell sings a song about someone who is so steeped in the bohemian religion that they wouldn’t be able to accept a higher standard of living even if “good fortune allowed!” She speaks of artists who go to the grave like virgins…their work never noticed because they would not practice any aspect of business in relation to art. And we’ve all seen artists who we believe have “sold their souls” and their art for the money, making art that pleases like a prostitute sells his or her body. But I really don’t think you can take away either leg of the tripod without losing the impetus and complex value of art and the creative spirit which as I mentioned spreads from the arts to the sciences and other scholarship. These are all tied together propping each other up to support the society and the individual artist. So many of us have spoken of a kind of balance in relation to the making of art and the living of a career or lifestyle (lifestyle is often just a politically correct term to replace the more Philistine “career“..) I often talk to my students using two terms to describe two aspects of their chosen paths in life. One is a “calling” which has to do with the first two legs of the tripod-- the spiritual aspect and the community aspect. The other term is occupation or profession which has to do with the way the third leg intertwines with the other two urges. And I mention that they have to eat, keep a roof over their heads and clothes on their bodies (depending on where they live and the local moral codes of course.) Even if they only survive to continue to make their art ( a very minimal endeavor really, if you think about it-- I’ve managed to live on $10,000 a year while housing, feeding, clothing and even educating a family of four. I do have to admit that I was much younger then and had much more energy though. But thankfully the older I got the more ways I found to gain those rewards that my status as an artist have allowed. Thanks Joni. I took your advice.In the end, after an artist has had an effect on their community because they help connect and unify our ability to taste, touch, hear, smell and see, and maybe give some hint of that world beyond those material connections to our physical realities they are celebrated and rewarded with either or both status and money. Rodin was given a mansion in which to live and create and he was made a state treasure. Picasso was able to pay all his back taxes with the body of his work and museums have been dedicated to his production in Paris, Barcelona and other places. Churches are full of the bounty of art. State building have huge and gorgeous murals and statues to celebrate not only the state but also the artists who were commissioned to produce them. The Sistine Chapel has been recently cleaned and preserved. We talk of Van Gogh never selling a painting. Yet in reality he sold everything he ever did to his brother who hid them away until a time when they would be appreciated. Sadly this did not happen until after both of them were dead. Gaudy’s work is preserved in Barcelona, and in the case of the Familia Segrada, continued along the lines of his perceived ideas and designs. Is his cathedral only a monument to God? When I visited the ongoing construction I only heard the name Gaudy spoken . In reality it is both a celebration of the Catholicism and unity of the Catalans as well as a celebration of Gaudy’s own faith and creativity. Even one of our local naïve or so-called primitive artists Elijah Pierce managed to make a living both by cutting hair and selling his wood carvings out of his barber shop gallerywhich celebrated the Black Community of the city of Columbus Ohio. His work is now preserved in the Columbus Museum.
I have an iron nutcracker in the shape of a favorite dog that my grandfather owned. He was a carver who made his money at that time carving the molds for gas and water meters. He never thought of himself as an artist but wanted to celebrate his beloved pet and so he carved his likeness and cast it himself. My father gave it to me a few years ago along with his chisels. I never even knew my grandfather had been a carver. I always thought he was a janitor. (We could also speak of the spiritual history of the word ‘janitor’ which goes back to the God Janos or Janis, a two faced God often associated with coming and going whose image was often posted over doorways and entrances to buildings. A janitor is one who keeps both the portals as well as the what is inside in order.)
So I want those of us who have heard this calling, received this talent, both of which are religious metaphors for a mission from God… or if you prefer to call it your obsession which suggests a kind of insanity once considered also to be the result of the touch of the Gods before it became a purely psychological term… or perhaps you think of it as an addiction, then you must understand that drugs were and still are often used to bring on religious experience in many primitive tribes…whatever you call it, however you couch it I want you to believe in the value of what you do and the gift you give to those around you. And that even if you do not perceive the value in their eyes know that they do value it, if only to wish that they too had such an ability. They may not feel they are able to afford to buy your work, you may never find a patron or a collector. But there are other ways to receive the rewards and status of your profession. Just look a little closer to home. Most of us artists, no matter how poor we think we are, have wonderful collections of original art, homes full of the stuff, that many people are quite jealous of. And just as people visit my website to see what I do, there are those in my circle of friends who come to visit me if only to be in my house surrounded by my art and the art of my friends. Along with a little sharing of some wine and warm conversation (communion) and a little meat sacrificed on the BBQ grill they walk away with a new, more beautiful outlook on the world. Or at least so they tell me. 
