Art defines a people. Has any culture developed without its being defined by its art? Not only our conception of them – but their perception of themselves? Could the Greeks and the Romans have achieved what they did without the very art that defined them? Or has Napoleon been what he was without his David, Ingres, Meissonier, and so many others who almost made him a god? And what about Virgil’s apotheosis of Julius Caesar? Or conversely, Goya’s flip side of the Napoleonic Wars? Or Picasso’s Guernica? The cartoons of Thomas Nast? Harry Beecher Stowe, who probably wrote one of the most influential novels ever written? Or Dickens’s influence on child labor laws and the whole legal system? Who better reached the people if they originated the ideas or merely parroted them? – whatever the ideology – whether on religion, philosophy, or politics – whatever the point of view – art seems to have the final say. What would existentialism have been without Sartre’s art to back it up? Or the novels of Rand versus Steinbeck? Les Miserables? Ellison? Wright? Plays by Ibsen, Brecht, Buchner, Gorki, O’Casey, Osborne, Kushner, Friel, Behan, Hansberry, Fugard, Hellman, Hauptmann, Wasserstein and songs? – too many to even mention – so let me sum it up with this: Time magazine’s choice for the best song of the 20th century: “Strange Fruit” – Billie Holiday! *
Those are just some of the ones that had a more overt, immediate effect. What about the ones who had such a profound effect it’d merely trivialize their influence to even go there? – Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Chaucer, Joyce, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Milton, Shikibu, Eliot (both), Cervantes, Proust, Yeats, Pushkin, Euripides, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, Ovid, Blake, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Wagner, De Vinci, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, etc., etc., etc..
Yes – ideas!
– Can only have an effect when the idea comes alive! Schindler’s List only used one color – red! – once – in the entire movie: the little girl with the red coat who eventually gets lost in the sea of doomed people. But that’s all it took to see the reality beyond a mere statistic. Because fiction puts a face on fact. I dare anybody to read Tess of the d’urbervilles (1891) and not only see it more relevant than ever today (in light of the Harvey Weinsteins and all the other revelations that have come out in the last few years about the victimization of women that have been ignored for so long) – But – to be so moved as to be convinced they’re ALL guilty now – ferret them all out and hang them ALL out to dry! And that’s only for starters! – Aside from seeing the injustice done to Tess, a mere fictional character, Hardy makes us question not only the unfairness of life itself – but the very cosmos! And that’s the power of art (but that’s another story – see LV [55])! Philosophers may ignite the spark – but artists lead the charge.
How many boys went to war because of a movie they saw – movies of the Russian Revolution or Hitler’s propaganda movies – Hollywood goes to war? Or a song they heard? (Or during Vietnam, how many didn’t go to war because of a song they heard? – “Blowing in the Wind” or “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” – or a novel they read – Johnny Got His Gun? – or the movie by the same name?).
Art defines people as much as people define art! – both are inextricably linked and are as much a part of our Lives as “breathing out and breathing in” (a line from a song, from a movie, based on a play, sung by the same person who played in two other movies, based on two other plays, all by the same playwright. Name the playwright and his method to get his point across, and you begin to understand what this is all about [for the answer to that one, see XXXVIII]).
* – Written by Abel Meeropol (published under his pseudonym Lewis Allen in 1937 and performed by Billie Holiday In 1939.
Southern trees bear a Strange Fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black body swinging in the southern breeze
Strange Fruit hanging from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh
Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop