koffl next back Author : Jan B. Hurych
Title : PARALLAXES
Essay: WHAT IS ART FOR? (7)



What is art for?

I was recently listening to my car radio and there was an interesting discussion: several "ladies and gentlemen of the jury", the literary critics that is, were discussing the new book of the author who was not known to me. Their opinions ranged from "readable" to "rather boring" and from "not so accurate" to "quite remote from real life".

Well, the differences as those are quite normal - we all have different opinions and we are quite free to voice them. But hearing them from a bunch of critics who were supposed to give us, the readers, a decent judgement of that book, one may wonder: are their opinions really fitting? And even more important: do they really have something to say to us or are they just massaging their own egos? Suddenly, one of them said something smart: "But the author cannot please everybody - this is not a propose of art at all!"

In a moment, they all realized how egotistic, how individualistic and - at least according to my opinion - how stupid they all were. They, professional critics, completely lost the track of their mission: to help readers to appreciate the good parts in that book, something the artist surely had in mind. Maybe they believed we are supposed to find it by ourselves, maybe they didn't consider that to be so important. Net profit of their critical views was only the fact that the reader who listened to them would probably never buy the book, listening to their judgments. And that is bad, very bad - they threw out the water from the tub with the baby as well!

They were biased, unjust and shameless. True, even critic could not please everybody - and should not! - but they were too much postmarked by their profession: they considered themselves the guardians of the Holy Literature and "Superb" taste. The false feeling - that they are here to criticize only, sometimes at any cost - was too deep under their polished skins. They did not consider the other part of the coin: to stress good features, to praise where the praise is due, to evaluate without prejudice. Yes, they thought they were here only for criticizing, nitpicking and downplaying . . .


Well, they should have known better. Fortunately for us, common folks, their opinions mean very little. True, we may not recognize which art is really the best, but we know what we like, what pleases us and what arouses our interest, right? Well, not entirely; this is unfortunately not enough and never was. That is not to say that we, common folks, have bad taste or that we do not understand what was meant by this and that. It may be partly true, but it is not the point. Art is not just what we like or what we appreciate.

The whole history of mankind is mainly the history of politics and art. While the politics runs in circles and the proverbial saying "we never learn too much from history" is probably very true, the art basically reflects the continuo, the evolutionary and never ending process. It is the quest for better humanity, for turning the mankind into a decent, intelligent and cooperating community. That of course requires continuous improvement, continuous searching. Quite often we have to look back and compare: are we doing it better than before or are we just repeating the same mistakes? Are we coming up with new ideas or do we just recycle the old or superficial ones?

Of course, we have one big problem: good art is not always saying things the easy way - art does not simply post announcements nor gives the orders, it does not strictly specify what should be done and how. There is a real need for doing it that way: to leave enough space for further thinking. Art is encouraging us to have our own thoughts and to appreciate the other people thoughts. Sometimes we do not fully understand, but nevertheless we feel our way through. Yes, I have in mind the art which is struggling to find new ways of communicating the ideas - the visions if you wish - anything which makes our lives more valuable, richer, more meaningful.

No, I am not trying here to define art - the accurate definition of it is impossible anyway. I am just trying to figure out what is art for me alone. You see, it went like this: from early childhood, I was attracted by music, books, paintings, statues, you name it. Then I became a radio amateur and switched to study engineering, something which also interested me (and still does). Long time after that, I run the I.Q. test on myself and discovered that the right half of my brain (the art, visualization, imagination) is actually better than the left half (logic, mathematics, technical things). Only then I understood the cravings of my childhood, the urge to write stories, poems, play accordion, paint and what not. Still, I am happy with that part of my life I spent in engineering: it was quite a challenge and the earning were good as well.

Then I retired and decided to give it a chance. For past eight years I have been writing articles and stories, for newspapers as well as for Net magazines. I also started my own electronic enzines: literary magazine Hurontaria (it run for four years) and more entertaining Priloznik (now also in its fourth year). And what's more: my library of electronic books (free to download from Net) reached the "astronomical" number of fifty books - this one including..

It does not matter how good or bad I am - I just had to try it and give it my best. It was rather easy: I started to write while I was on High school and never rally stopped. I also engage in painting, writing verses, playing harmonica, singing, electronic graphics and others. And I find the real satisfaction in what I am doing, in creating something as well as in publishing it. Most of responses of my readers were encouraging and I will surely continue, irregardless :-).

Now you may ask what all that has to to with art? After all, I was also satisfied when I engineered something which worked well and was useful. There is of course one difference: those designs satisfied only material needs of people. There are of course the other needs as well . . .