Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
White Papers
The Art Spirit
An artist is personally disposed, so much so that even the sensibilities that an artist shares in common with other members of a social community is given the same energy as those that distinguishes one from that community. And as ever distinguishing and unique as artists may be aware or think they are, they are doombound as expressionists if disabled to socially relate. How ever personally disposed an artist may be, the essential quality of an artist is to be also socially predisposed. Artists are social creatures as much as they are individualists.
An artist is intent on expressing all human faculties. Such a path leads a young aspirant of venerable gnosis to assign equal weight to both subjective and objective things. The artist has evolved to be both mutually exclusive frames of mind...'I am" and 'we are.' Under the spell of the muse, the artist may exist at any earthly realm or break the limits of any realm altogether, undergoing transient transfigurations from earthbound bonds to one with 'all and everything' for the duration of the spell. It is this bond to a greater realm that perhaps prompts an artist to, for no more reason necessarily than 'one can do it,' maintain some outlet however modest or not, for the expression. With that clarity and resolve, the artist seeks the means to bring spirit into the light..and by those means maintain the station of two mutually exclusive world'views vying for incarnation.
Artists owe it to themselves at some time, if not already predisposed as a subjective artist, to express only their own sensibilities, otherwise who are they?..not being altogether themselves, nor themselves altogether for anyone else. Even as collaborating artists of a troupe or company, it is still an expression of their own collective sensibilities, however much the expression may be another variation on a theme, insofar as the expression brings pleasure to the performer, and successive expressions of the same bring joy.
Should the stature of science be allowed to become so large that art becomes lost in its shadow? Standardization, uniform methodology controls, universal effects regimenting universal causes, art consumed by the shadows of science replaces religion as the 'opiate of the masses;' a performer, but stone'hearted priest or priestess asking for tithes. Expression of art is a singular event, a special singularity, a subjective expression that is relative to the artist's lifestyle, and it is this lifestyle that the relativity of art has meaning. The source of this meaning relates more with the artist's imagination and inspiration, the artist's intuition and initiative with regard to the knowledge of the artist, him or her self, than irrelevant rhetoric in vogue, or critiques of art pundits who have sold the world on their worth.
There is a common misapprehension, most often by art pundits, about the execution of subjective art..that is, 'it can only be vain.' But the subjective artist knows that there is always improvement that can be made to the opus, given maturity and improved skill..because, as it has been written, 'one's reach must always exceed one's grasp.' Elsewise, the work is indeed...vain.
The success of art is directly related to what the artist believes to have accomplished; it is irrelevant to what society thinks, most certainly secondary, and being secondary...nonessential. If the art becomes popular, it is because the artist's sensibilities has relevancy to society, rather than someone's ability to apprehend what society likes, or what the art pundits conceptualize...things better left as flesh and blood, for all the effort an artist makes to breathe life into it..than what entertainment critics and entrepreneurs would have one think of themselves using society as meter, for within a free enterprise environment, art struggles like a tramp scavenger amid the heat, smoke, and confusion, savagely consuming morsels tenderized by apathy, running gaunt until happenstance provides the next carrion.
Requirements of an artist's success is not established by mammon, but by the artist. The success of an artist is a private affair. Its expression is wholly self reflecting, self absorbing, and self evolving. The artist atones with 'all and everything.' Feeling free, strength surges throughout the body. The artist sees, and in seeing, dies. And in that dying, an offering is made; it is good only when the artist judges it to be so because a work of art can only be executed by the rhapsody of its creator.
To know art and the art spirit, experience it. For the rest, enjoy the rapport or just let it be. If the art spirit does not inspire thought or feeling, then enough is said. Anything more would suggest the false impression that an artist is obliged to express something other than the rhapsody in one's heart. It is only the embodiment of this rhapsody that gives art equal station with everything else; most certainly, an equal station with science.