Friday, October 30, 2009

Beauty and the Duty of the Artist


The recent years have seen the overwelming availability of information. What they call information explosion, or information overload. In this situation, one thing that is obvious is that all kinds of information are floating around, in tne various kinds of media available.

A new generation has grown up in the midst of this overload. I wonder if youngsters today can discriminate between the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the same way previous generations had been able to.

Now more than ever the profession of the artist assumes more importance. It is the duty of the artist to depict what is good, what is beautiful, what is not ugly, in their creations. The question now is, are they able to do that?

All kinds of art is being created, reflecting the contemporary world. Much of these are not beautiful, but they are being created by artists. Use of extremely clear images, especially in art installations, using materials like blood, urine, stool, gunpowder....it is doubtful whether they are creating any beauty at all. They may be more educative, for in the line of activism. But art?

1 comment:

Hans Ostrom said...

Great blog! Good luck with your work.