No matter where you live on the political spectrum…left, right or center…we are living in uncertain times. There is much to feel anxious about: peaceful protestors being teargassed (or worse) on the streets of our cities, your kids’ or grandkids’ inability to afford to buy a house, parents who struggle to afford to feed themselves and their kids. The list goes on.
It is easy to wonder, “Does making art mean anything at this time?” As Jordan Wolfson said in How Painting Can Help Save the World:
“One doesn’t need to know the latest climate change information, the details of human trafficking, or worldwide poverty to wonder “What the hell am I doing? The world is burning and I’m sitting in the corner coloring? What does it matter, one more picture? What does it matter, one more painter?”
It’s interesting to note that the current leaders of our country seem to question the value of art too. The current Trump administration has significantly reduced arts funding by attempting to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities, canceling hundreds of existing grants and imposing new content restrictions on what qualifies for art funding. Why are they doing this?
Historically, governments that suppress art do so because creativity challenges absolute control, fosters critical thinking, and promotes individuality, and threatens the ideal of obedience and conformity. They censor challenging works, promote state-approved art, and demonize modern/abstract art as “degenerate” to enforce a singular narrative, and control culture.
So here is why we should continue to make and share our art:
- Art offers alternative visions, sparks imagination, and disrupts the status quo, giving people ideas beyond the any government’s control.
- Rather than offer simple truths and absolute certainty, art has the power to disrupt the status quo and enlarge ideas.
- Art can unite people and communicate difficult truths.
- Instead of a collective, homogenized identity or set of ideals, art celebrates individual expression.
Many of us in the United States have come to accept freedom of expression as a given. History tells us that this freedom can and should not be taken for granted.
- In Nazi Germany, Hitler’s regime aggressively controlled the arts, branding modernist, expressionist, and avant-garde works as “degenerate art.” Thousands of artworks were confiscated or destroyed, and many artists were banned from exhibiting. The state promoted a narrowly defined aesthetic focused on nationalism, racial purity, and militarism, even organizing a 1937 “Degenerate Art” exhibition to publicly shame and delegitimize dissident art.
- In Franco’s Spain, regional languages, music and literature were suppressed. Artists and writers who opposed the regime were exiled, imprisoned, or silenced. Censorship permeated all cultural output, including theater, music, and film.
- During China’s Cultural Revolution, universities were closed, books were burned, and traditional art forms were branded “bourgeois.” Artists, writers, and scholars were publicly humiliated, imprisoned or killed.
- Under the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot’s regime sought to erase Cambodia’s intellectual and artistic heritage, viewing artists and intellectuals as existential threats to its ideology.
Who knew we were so powerful? The next time you have a moment of wondering if your creative endeavor has any meaning or power in light the current state of our country or the world, carry on dear artists. It is a privilege and a necessity to be creating at this time.