There Is War In Our World And Still I Make Art.

Am I Nero fiddling while Rome burns?

Perhaps I am a spiritual member of the band that played whilst the Titanic sank?

What I know is people are dying and I am sat here recording my thoughts on a computer for a competition... for a competition that will donate some money to the Ukraine... but, it is still for a competition, from which, should I get chosen as a decent contender, I will get kudos.

How self-serving!

How selfish!

Surely my actions, during this time of war... this time of international crisis... should extend further than the flight of my fingers over a keyboard. I should be campaigning, organising rallies, lobbying government, completing relief work for the victims of the war.

"Real stuff"... Stuff that makes a difference.

But I am not.

I am sat... writing.

An action that seems akin to farting and then enjoying your own smell.

So, I ask myself...

Is the creation of art during times of war a magnificent, self-indulgent, grotesque?

Because... honestly... in the cold light of day... it feels like it is.

Mehmet Murat ildan, the Turkish playwright, novelist and thinker disagrees...

"In peace, continue your art; in war, continue your art; in freedom, continue your art; in captivity, continue your art!"

Artist, Ai Weiwei takes this further:

"The purpose of art is the fight for freedom."

Really? My flights of whimsy and I = freedom fighter?

Nah.

Not buying it.

Let's hear from some others...

Art is the daughter of freedom. - Friedrich Schiller

The work of art is a scream of freedom. - Christo

Every true artist is at war with the world. – Anthony Keidis – Scar tissue

I repeat... really?

What is it that they know that I do not?

This is a question that has increased in irritation every day for a few weeks. Then, a couple of days ago, the itch became too much and I got out from behind my keyboard, went into the city, and paid a visit to the very imaginatively named Manchester Art Gallery.

It felt like an appropriate place to start.

Their whole function, after all, is art... If, as many great thinkers describe, art and freedom are intrinsically linked, surely I would find the answers in an institution entirely dedicated to art.

Surely?

I shall cut to the chase...

I found no answers.

Instead, what I found was a whole load of questions.

Literally. Question, after question, after question.

Starting with this spider diagram of 8 questions about work:

This board was positioned right in the entrance of the first gallery surrounded by pictures and installations designed to facilitate thought and reflection of the 8 questions.

This piece particularly resonated:

Why did it resonate more than the other images? Was it because I am a woman? Because my family are predominantly from Manchester? Because I have spent a lot of time running businesses in Manchester? Because I am familiar with the Royal Exchange?

Questions. Questions. Questions.

I was reminded of something that Anton Chekhov once said.

"The role of the artist is to ask questions not to answer them."

Was that it? Was it that simple?

I walked and thought. Could "questions" be the scratch my itch was looking for?

It certainly looked hopeful.

Some of the art fulfilled Chekhov's maxim so completely that it ONLY consisted of questions. An example being this work by Mark Titchner titled "Some Questions About Us."

I was beginning to think that perhaps I had arrived at an answer to why so many great artists equate art with freedom. Within art's gift was this vast facility to raise questions, to provoke thought, to dig in at the privileged, to level the lauded.

I paused.

The phrase "level the lauded" calling me into it for further inspection.

Chuck Palahnuik once said:

"The first step – especially for young people with energy and drive and talent, but not money – the first step to controlling your world is to control your culture. To model and demonstrate the kind of world you demand to live in. To write the books. Make the music. Shoot the films. Paint the art."

Chuck was on to something here... Art was more than a question machine.

There was power to be found in art.

Those who control the culture do control the world. Art is a way to do this. Without money - art is a way to acquire power, to create freedom.

Like many writers and artists I have often stared at my blank page, my blank canvas, and marvelled at how I could create something from absolutely nothing.

All I had to do was begin.

There is power in that.

There is freedom.

I thought about this desire of artists to express themselves. To be heard, to be seen, to be recognised, and I reflected on that old adage, first written by English playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton...

The pen is mightier than the sword.

With the words I write, should they be sufficiently gravitational, I could wield extensive power with a few strokes of my pen. My words could reach far further than the swords of a whole garrison of soldiers.

As if to add a backbone to this train of thought the next gallery was all about Climate Justice examining themes of power and privilege.

Again, many images were gathered within the gallery space to promote thought on the topic. The following image arrested my attention:

I read the adjacent write up, describing the motivation behind the picture (see below), and I could physically feel what the image was saying.

The words "Our silence" kicked out at me from the little card. If artists stopped giving their unique voices to what matters in the world... through words, art, and images... significant matters really could get lost because they sit outside of the prevailing mindset/ culture/ power.

Art, I thought, is the non-linear bedfellow of the freedom of speech.

Art always speaks its mind.

John Dewey - American Philosopher and Educational Reformer said of art:

"Every art communicates because it expresses. It enables us to share vividly and deeply in meanings….For communication is not announcing things….Communication is the process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and singular….the conveyance of meaning gives body and definiteness to the experience of the one who utters as well as to that of those who listen."

How many times had I read a book, watched a play, read an article, viewed a picture and felt like I had seen feelings described, acted, portrayed that I thought were unique to me?

So. Many. Times.

John Dewey was bang on the money when he said that art communicates because it creates participation.

Art is freedom BECAUSE it creates meaning for the artist AND their audience and then it unites them in a deeper understanding.

My short investigation into the relationship between art and freedom had revealed so much to me. Although, as I listed what I had discovered from my short visit to the city art gallery, I still had a sense that I had only seen the tip of the iceberg.

I wrote a short summary to reflect on later:

Through art we can question anything.

Through art we can build something from nothing.

Through art we can influence cultures.

Through art we can create mutual, participative, meaning.

Through art we can be seen, heard, and recognised for what we think and what we feel.

Through art we can acquire power.

I walked up to Piccadilly Train Station to get the free bus back over to the other side of town feeling pretty darned pleased with myself... and thankful that I had managed my time well enough to get to the school pick-up on time!

Then, in the doorway of the main city station, I saw this....

A life-sized statue of 7 blinded soldiers leading each other off the battlefields of WW1. The title of the piece "Victory Over Blindness" the artist: Johanna Domke-Guyot. Revealed to the public in 2018. Seen by me for the first time on 25th March 2022.

As draughts of people passed by on their way to somewhere I was floored by a depth charge of emotion. The realism, the situation, the sentiment, the poignancy, the pain, the resilience, the whole spirit of the piece was remarkable.

I had been so consumed with understanding and questioning the relationship between what art and freedom was at a rational level I had forgotten what it was at an emotional level. Just one look at the statue "Victory Over Blindness"... stood at the gateway of Manchester Piccadilly Station, a station that had welcomed hundreds of thousands of soldiers home from battlefields, had instantly peeled away my rational, laboured, world and left me raw.

I started to shrink.

The fight for freedom was more than communication, questions, meaning, and power play... much more.

People who fought for freedom were prepared for huge sacrifice.

Sat in my bourgeois, suburban world, tapping on a keyboard - where was my sacrifice? How was I "fighting" for freedom?

Compared to what these men had endured on the battlefields of WW1 my existential troubles about the relationship between art and freedom were insignificant, of zero consequence.

I was back to feeling like a fraud. A fool.

I stared at the bronze.

Taking in every ounce of what it represented like it were emitting little electric currents that were stabbing at my soul.

Then I thought...

What if this art had never existed because there was too much going on in the world?

What if art did stop and this statue had never been made or books never written?

Could wilfully not creating something be along the same lines as burning them?

What if Anne Frank, Sylvia Plath, or Maya Angelou had decided... too much going on today for me to put pen to paper?

What then?

Thank God these artists were braver than I. They fought their demons, injustice, and hate... and made the art anyway.

Sometimes... I thought to myself, as I wove through waves of beating myself up, reconciling my concerns, then feeling like a fraud all over again... Sometimes... the fight for the freedom of expression isn't just a fight with the world. It is a fight with yourself.

Ray Bradbury said this well:

Self-consciousness is the enemy of all art, be it acting, writing, painting, or living itself, which is the greatest art of all.

In my preoccupation with feeling like a fraud I had given into the enemy of art.

I had allowed my self-consciousness to imprison me.

International crisis or not I should have had the fortitude to dig in.

After all... looking foolish is hardly a sacrifice when people are out there actually dying for these freedoms I enjoy.

Mehmet Murat ildan was right when he said make the art no matter what. You may look like a fool, you may be criticised for being out of step with what is happening in the world, you may seem selfish but... you must do it anyway.

I may not be the best writer in the world but one day I may find myself with something to say that only I can give voice to and when that day comes, I want to be ready. So, I shall ignore how it may look to others, I shall give my time, and I shall practice until I am good enough... because if I stop now when the going seems tough... If I worry about how I look... or what others think... I may never be good enough to say what I need to, when I need to say it, in the way it needs to be said.