Arts Advocacy

As I was thinking about writing yesterday’s entry on my drive home, there was a part of me that was experiencing some internal conflict. I do wholeheartedly believe in what I wrote at the end of my entry about the arts being a two way street-people in general would benefit from recognizing that many of their activities involve the arts and those in the arts need to acknowledge their arts training allows them to express themselves in non-arts activities and vocations.

This all derives from the idea put forth by the recent NEA report suggesting that more activities need to be recognized as involvement in the arts. What this means for most arts people is that they need to try to avoid the reflex to deem anything that does not approach some Platonic ideal of capital “A” art as not being art. Sorry everyone, time to get a little humble and admit that awful performance or painting you just saw is actual an artistic effort. Real art is a messy process as well you know, though granted some people never make any progress from their failures.

So that brings me to the question that was causing me some mental grumblings – Should we as arts people expect recognition of elite performance?

Now notice, I got what I feel is the source of elitism in the arts, dismissal of perceived substandard work as not art, out of the way before I asked this. What I am asking is if there should be an expectation of discernment between different quality performances. I ask this because there seems to be an anti-intellectualism trend emerging in the U.S. and perhaps other parts of the world and I don’t particularly think this is an area in which the arts should concede ground.

Yes, classical music, ballet and Shakespeare are hard to understand from the outset. But you know, so are the rules of football, baseball, cricket, poker and a thousand other activities. Before I attended my first football game, my father took me down in the basement and drew a lot of Xs and Os on our blackboard to try to explain the game to me. I really wasn’t that clear about the rules when I attended, though I did enjoy the tailgating and hanging out with the other fathers and sons who attended with us. In time, I got a better sense of when to cheer.

It wasn’t much different the first couple Shakespearean plays I viewed. I only caught half of what was going on, but what I did struck me as pretty damn clever and I stuck with it. The first time I took up Drew McManus’ challenge for Take A Friend To The Orchestra month and went myself, I didn’t quite understand or like everything, but there were some sublime moments.

My point is, while it takes a lot of hard work acquiring enough experience and education to attend an arts event, the effort isn’t any more involved in learning the rules for sports. Honestly, I think most aspects of arts attendance are a lot more straightforward than sports rules. Much of the impenetrable obscurity surrounding an attendance experience is due to regular attendees reinforcing the perception to bolster self worth and intimidate others. Read the script, libretto or watch a snippet of the dance on YouTube and you are half way to understanding the actual performance despite the vibes you might be getting from the rest of the audience. You can feel just as out of place at a sporting event. My first exposure to sumo wrestling was when I went to a match by myself a few years ago and people there were shouting things in a language I don’t speak. It took me a little while to figure out the rules, but I loved every minute of it.

But back to the question of recognizing elite performances. As much as people’s activities might qualify as arts participation. There is indeed a difference in quality, between a talented amateur and a person who has dedicated their life to mastering their craft. This is standard that should not loosened as the arts make an effort to do a better job of acknowledging all the ways in which people participate in the arts. My concern is that there will be a move to blur lines and equate artists in a way that diminishes recognition of true ability and talent.

There are athletes that operate at an elite level that few can approach and you don’t hear many people claiming that their high school or college teams are as good as professional boxers or basketball/baseball/football players. You will hear people claim a performance is as good as anything on Broadway. This may cause you to cringe that Broadway should be the gold standard when so many other exemplars exist, but the real problem is that the comment may be charitable at best. There is a perception that hard work over a short term and heart is enough to earn A’s in school or an acting/dancing/singing position. Shows like American Idol may perpetuate this idea, but it is definitely a misapprehension shared by people pursuing arts training and degrees. Regardless of the profession, there are only a few who can operate at an elite level and fewer still who have invested the effort to do so.

I am no more interested in starting a conversation about whether a classical musician is a superior artist to a jazz musician/a rock musician/country musician than I am about debating whether the marathoners and decathletes on the U.S. Olympic teams are better athletes than the sprinters and high jumpers. I do think it is clearer to people that this particular group of track athletes operate at the highest levels than it is that Itzak Perlman does as well. Even if these athletes lose their events, people whose only exposure to track and field is watching it once every four years can explain why they are superior performers. When he is playing a solo at Carnegie Hall, context just as prestigious as being the US representative at the Olympics, can people with a casual relationship to classical music explain what about Perlman’s performance makes him superior?

That is where some of the onus to educate falls. As we know, it takes more than just a single exposure to make someone appreciate the arts. Educating them about quality requires even greater work. Yes, we want people to know the arts are for everyone and everyone is participating in the arts to a greater degree than they imagine. But we have to maintain heroes for them to idolize and they have to clearly know why the person is worthy of being admired. This doesn’t detract from the recognition the star of the local community theatre production receives any more than Major League baseball stars diminish the glory accorded the powerhouses on the local softball team. No one confuses one for the other though.