Here's a quote from author Hanif Kureishi in a recent Listener article:
Artists are the people chosen by the society to be reckless and say things that are not normally said.
This isn't the first time I've come across this viewpoint from an artist or a critic. I don't believe I've ever heard this view espoused by anyone outside of the arts industry. I think this is probably because society thinks about artists perhaps 1% as much as they think about themselves. And even that might be a generous figure.
But the claim might still be true. Let's look at the first part of the statement. Kureishi says that artists are chosen by society. It is certainly trivially true that popular artists are in a sense chosen by society by dint of the number of people who appreciate them. But almost exclusively these popular artists are writers like Dan Brown, and not the sort of people Kureishi is thinking of (ie people like him). It's hard to see in what sense 'high' artists are ever chosen by society, because their fanbase is limited to the sort of people who read the Listener arts and literature pages - a group that we may reasonably surmise consist of academics, or middle grade public servants (ie thoughtful ones without any ambition), school teachers, and librarians. It would be difficult to claim that this group represents society as a whole, even if all too many of them end up in parliament.
What of the idea that society wants artists to be reckless and say things that aren't normally said? Certainly no one would ever cry out 'please, someone, slay our sacred cows!'. It's artists who have the audacity to choose that role for themselves. Now once upon a time there was a legitimate need for artists in this mode (or so the historical orthodoxy has it). However, progressively all the sacred cows have been slaughtered, and we no longer live in a truly complacent society - or at least a complacent society that lacks for shallow confrontational art that 'challenges' it. In fact it would be more artistically brave and interesting to try to artistically communicate that sometimes, actually, society does work and people are ok.
So there's no room for artistic recklessness because all the taboos that could have been broken, have been. All that's left is for artists to be forced into ever more ludicrous displays (Christs in urine, virgins in condoms, et al, et al) to get pointless attention.
Granted, there are still societies in which Kureishi's words are relevant and applicable, societies where jail time is the least an artist can expect for challenging the accepted order. But Western society is not one of these. Art has a real struggle now to be relevant because the revolution is over and there's little left to say.
As I see it, the only worthwhile artistic project (if indeed there was ever another one) is to provide people with art that conforms to their natural sense of aesthetics (which innate rather than learned, as much as artists might hope otherwise), but also delivers something more intelligent and elevating than natural aesthetics alone require. And do it without satisfying obscure Theory, or self-conscious movements or political ideologies. Then artists would find themselves enjoying a more natural and accommodating place in society without having to demand attention through ridiculous posturing.
Postscript: Having railed against Kureishi I thought I should actually work out who he was. Turned out he wrote My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, which critiqued Thatcher Britain. Good to see that having appointed Kureishi to tell them about their foibles, the British people reformed their country into the green, pleasant, and above all strife-free, country that it is today.
Posted by stuart at May 15, 2008 12:01 PM