«Through the works made, the artist speaks and communicates with others. The history of art, therefore, is not only the history of works, but also of men. The works of art speak of their authors, introduce the knowledge of their intimacy and reveal the original contribution they offer to the history of culture ”. John Paul II in his Letter to the artists
Hegel held that “Art is a particular form under which the spirit manifests itself”. Art would thus be a spiritual activity that requires matter to express itself. Matter and artist are thus united and protected by that need, inherent to the human being, to generate beauty. Conceived of art in this way, I often wonder about the dichotomy that sometimes occurs between the creator and his work, that enormous dissimilarity between a life full of contradictions and the excellent quality of a work that reveals a sensitive soul. How is it possible that the ability to imagine and shape an admirable work and at the same time be capable of manifesting the most abject of the human being is present and with such force in the same person?
I cannot help but admire excellence in any artistic discipline and, on the other, feel the deep rejection that sometimes arouses in me who carries it out. And I ask myself, again and again, if it is possible to isolate work and doer; If it is lawful to dispense with the one who gave it to the light to the delight of all, even though what it represents as a person can deeply hurt our sensitivity. There is in me, in those cases and it bothers me to let myself be carried away by prejudice, a marked duality that it is difficult for me to accept in those cases in which I admire the work but not the person who produces it; When a poem, a film, a piece of music exalts my spirit and the person who made it possible provokes a visceral rejection that I cannot overcome. It is not something new, nor do I intend to open as original a debate known and always difficult to reconcile under very different points of view and reflections.
Octavio Paz says as always accurate “The secret life of the man and the woman of the 20th century, the feelings of love, hatred, physical attraction, the fascination for death, the desire for brotherhood, disgust and ecstasy, all that universe that is every human being , has been the subject of contemporary poets and novelists. It is a world that has not been studied or dealt with by modern political thinkers and even less so by sociologists or economists. To know, what is called knowing, modern man, you do not have to read an economics treatise but rather a Faulkner novel or a Neruda poem “ Reflecting on his words, I wonder if it does not come from the artist’s faculty to live his life under different parameters from those common to mortals, that ability to recreate, to capture the very essence of things and to give ourselves life devoid of artifice. . A life that throbs and that shuns the cold, perfectly calculated objectivity that other disciplines provide. “You have to have chaos and frenzy inside to give birth to a dancing star” Friedrich Nietzsche said and I feel it the same way. And despite this and despite being almost convinced of my own arguments, I fall and return again without being able to avoid it, in some very obvious cases for me. Return to the confused tangle that inevitably leads me to issue, even before myself, a biased opinion full of partiality in judgment; to banish from my life certain characters that I consider ethically and morally despicable and for that reason to unjustly avoid looking at their works.
Then new doubts assail me that force me to analyze everything from a point of view that I have not yet wielded. And I wonder if I consider a mandatory precept – my ego puffed up with impeccable virtue – the exemplarity of the artist. If I believe, in a duty inherent in his condition, that he proclaims himself to the world as being exceptional and different from the rest: politically correct, his conduct faultless, his attitude well tempered and measured in the trial. I wonder if every creator, to be accepted his legacy, should always live subjugated under the weight and magnificence of his work. If he is obliged to renounce being who he is in order to be pristine or rather on the contrary, condemned to accept that genius can also come from one’s own imperfection and from the fact of assuming it as part of the creative process. And at last I ask a question that demands an answer from me: should the artist be a beacon that illuminates the world in the midst of darkness and transcend his daily events? And really if I’m honest I think not, but at the same time I feel like I don’t have answers to all the questions. “It could be said that art is a« language »with which man expresses the physical and spiritual human reality, capturing the exterior and interiorizing it, and then returning it to exteriority from the creative freedom of the artist” to say of Rubén Muñoz Martínez, Graduate and Doctor in Philosophy from the University of Seville. And despite this, what can be done when the physical and spiritual reality, of that same man who expresses himself in freedom, enters an open and disconcerting conflict with mine.
Every creator of a work of art creates motivated by an inexcusable need to question the world, to reinterpret it in his own way, to explore it in order to explore himself, to open new paths, and to tear down old structures that allow new forms to emerge. The artist who is really an artist elaborates different theories and ways of integrating his personal vision of the things that surround him. She creates to tear down old norms and make them revived and fresh in her staging, to challenge the known canon of beauty, to worship herself at times and be her fiercest detractor at the same time. And so throughout history, more at times than others, his figure has been accompanied by a halo that placed him in a position close to the gods.
Today things have changed substantially. This idea barely achieves credit and is hardly sustained. It is well known that behind the term culture there remains, too often crouched, a complex apparatus that pulls the strings and that elevates the work of many so-called artists. All innocence lost, we have been stripped of any temptation to idealize the writer on duty offered to us on the front line by powerful publishers or the painter whose paintings are sold for indecent amounts of money in galleries serving spurious interests far removed from art. In this case it should be easier to detach the craftsman from his embroidery and contemplate the delicacy of his stitches only on the basis of the result itself. Nowadays it is possible to judge any type of scourge in people and at the same time recognize that they do not detract from their talent. On the one hand, we have a path already traveled that allows us to identify as criminal certain behaviors that were previously disguised by the benevolence of a language made to minimize realities that today cannot be discussed. It is not my intention to cite names or specific cases, but today we know that there is a great distance between the word “womanizer“, Always covered in an old and worn macho nuance that he assigns to the adjective”curious featsAt this time unacceptable. It is not a womanizer who abuses and cheats, who offends, causes pain, physically and psychologically mistreats, who commits rape, abuse and rape, who defiles a minor. It is not only on the wrong side who protects and justifies Nazism or fascism and their excesses. And yet, to be fair, I think it is necessary to detach ourselves, once and for all, from that bunker in which we lock up certain artists and their works, convinced of our moral superiority. As people they can and should be judged, but let their works represent themselves. Let’s give your work the value it deserves, let’s not subject it to a summary judgment by ostracizing it. And it is that as Marc Chagall affirmed “Art is, above all, a state of the soul” and some artists, even in the midst of their particular hell, let theirs fly until they reach the highest levels of perfection.
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