Good Art Gives -- but Doesn't Always Sell (Part 1, by Melvin Bray) | Sojourners

Good Art Gives -- but Doesn't Always Sell (Part 1, by Melvin Bray)

I've been on a real art binge of late. Reading, watching, listening to, experiencing, and creating as much as I can. Good art isn't just creative, it's generative -- that is, it inspires creative acts in others. It gives us hands to shape the world in new and living ways. And I've been thinking a lot about how much this world we share needs more of it.

Like any other act of love, I believe art is fundamentally contributive, not transactional. It's not an if-you-do-this-I'll-do-that proposition. By my experience, as soon as it becomes transactional, art more often than not simply becomes entertainment. The difference is the bottom line. The bottom line in entertainment is to perpetuate the transaction. At least they're honest about it, those who transact in performance art. They call it "the biz," show business, business being the operative word. I was chatting with an Atlanta-based artist friend of mine, Patdro Harris, who used to choreograph for Stevie Wonder. He mentioned Stevie once noted that the great thing for him was that when he broke on the scene in the '60s, the industry and the public were transacting for the very art that was stirring inside of him. Sadly, that is not often enough the case. More often, people transact for (give back to) that which affirms and leaves them right where they are, good, bad or indifferent. Art -- love -- says, "Even if you don't give back to me, I'm going to give to you, and it's going to be an attempt to seek your best."

As much as I'm extremely protective of people's right to create and contribute, I'm not one of those anything-for-art's-sake and all-things-are-art kinds of guys. For example, perhaps counterintuitively, I don't find a lot with the marketing label "Christian" to be good art. Don't get me wrong (I can hear some readers' blood pressure rising), brand-Christian has great Jesus-and-me-God-is-awesome-way-to-go inspiration and encouragement (which definitely has its place), but not enough ears-to-hear-tongues-to-taste-new-possibilities for my palate. Like this Christian comedy duo I recently saw on national network television. Fun, campy, entertaining, audience-participation act, but rather than subverting the Christian kitsch that has become the popular caricature of the way of Jesus, they seemed to be promoting it as adorably goofy and secretly cool because ultimately (shhhh!) "We're gonna win." Such triumphalism makes me nauseous. And we also can't overlook how often brand-Christian buys into notions that the Christian narrative totally overthrows. Take, for example, the alternative extreme, tragic hero/ine. Why are there so many tragedies of redemption (one dies a spectacular death so others can live) on brand-Christian shelves, but so few stories of resurrection (one succumbs to death and defeat, to be composted into a new iteration of life)? (I bet there are fewer than you think.) Resurrection (the anti-conclusion that manages to subvert every possible anticipated ending -- triumphant, tragic, cleverly ambivalent -- while being a bit of each and then something more, all at once) is the gift of hope-for-all that those who know the Jesus story have. However, many of the compelling tellings of it are currently coming from outside the brand. While we vacillate between Left Behind and The Passion, some have chosen a more/less _______ path (I couldn't think of a fully accurate word that would be worth the offense).

I don't find degradation very artful either. With art being quintessentially generative as far as I'm concerned, that which is degenerate doesn't do it for me. I can abide the grotesque and dark, but once I heard the story of an exhibit that was closed because of a piece debasing a graphic of The Virgin by placing it in a toilet with feces. I wholeheartedly agree with that decision. On the other hand, I was dismayed when the Secret Service shut down Yazmany Arboleda's installations The Assassination of Hillary Clinton and The Assassination of Barack Obama--which though provocatively titled, are purely symbolic portrayals of the media's treatment of these figures.
. Assuming the best until evidence to the contrary surfaces, I think they are brilliant, though undeniably disturbing (á la The New Yorker). Sometimes a good gut punch is the only thing that will blur our vision long enough for us to see.

[to be continued...]

Melvin BrayMelvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, purveyor of sustainability, and believer in possibilities. This post is one of a series of essays titled Home-Training.