I think my thing with this is, if you look throughout human history, you will be hard pressed not to find some sort of discord, conflict, anxiety, and other darkness society is contending with at any given point; and yet, the artists keep on in the production of their vocations. There's some stuff just made to entertain or escape, there's other stuff made to confront and challenge, and regardless of intent both types of art are often retrofitted through historical analysis as actually being 'about' whatever thing the historian decides the society was dealing with at the time. Some entertainment stuff is too superficial to survive the seriousness of the times, other confrontational stuff is too dated to last outside their contemporary provocations.
This all returns us to navigating, as individual artists, what you can do and whether what you can do fits your best sense of values and self. There are a lot of great art, artists, and art movements birthed out of a need to confront society directly. There are others that sought to transcend those issues by means of beauty and awe. You do you.
Personally, I slowed down focusing on making movies to try to get involved in activism in 2017-2018, and I just couldn't keep on it, I crashed out pretty hard. I was getting back into making my own stuff when the pandemic happened, and unlike so many people on social media who were like "Hip hip hooray, time for me to be alone at home and finally DO THE THING!", I was completely unproductive and incapable of creative work until around 2022 when things started opening up again.
Both show that regardless of my intentions to confront the darkness or avoid the darkness, neither worked for me. Now as I've gotten well back into the swing of things, I focus my activism very narrowly to specific networks and groups whose effects I can multiply with small actions, and I just focus on making my art beautiful and planning for a better future. I can't let the darkness determine the course of my life anymore, I tried and it did not go well for me. All I can do is live in it and furiously demand my own agency to create.
I'm incredibly grateful to read this. It's a wonderful alternative view to the one I've stumbled into, probably by virtue of exhaustion-based cynicism and general despair.
Artists have the write, rite, right to choose their level of responsibility in confronting, uncovering, wrongs and systems of destruction, in individuals including themselves, their families, communities, nations, worlds etc. So they must choose how they want to construct their responses. Some will band with other artists or groups, individuals.
Also I feel ruffled by the standard common usage of dark vs light—even though I use it also but I try to counter it.
yeah, i get your issue with "dark vs light" – it all feels a little racism-adjacent, but it's often hard to avoid ... particularly when your confined to the page-count restrictions of a screenplay
I think every one has a choice about whatever they do, but, for me, there is a moral component. A moral responsibility, if you will. If you see someone being victimized, you should speak out, you should act, you should do something. An artist, by choice I suppose, has an amplified voice. Their voice carries a different kind of cultural and social weight. To choose not to use it has always rubbed me as irresponsible. As for the light/dark of it, I'm not sure how to speak around it without drawing attention to that effort. Language, I suppose, fails me. "A responsibility to confront wickedness" or "a responsibility to confront the profound societal woes of our time" seems...inelegant. Any thoughts, Rhea?
the first thing that sprang to mind when i read Cole’s question was Monet’s Water Lilies series of paintings
created between 1914-26 i remember being ^taught^ that some critics and artists were unhappy with these pieces – believing Monet was actively ignoring the horrors of World War 1 – and, after some searching, it seems Monet may have somewhat agreed:
“I got back to work, as it's still the best way to avoid dwelling too much on our sad times, although I'm a little ashamed to think about trivial research on shapes and colours while so many people are suffering and dying for us.” – Monet
but with further searching, i couldn’t find anyone criticising Monet for his subject matter, but rather for his aesthetic choices:
“Monet, rejected by critics in the 19th century for being too radical, was now being criticised in the 20th century for not being radical enough.” – Open Culture
however others see the series as:
“a war memorial to the millions of lives tragically lost in the First World War” – James Payne
---
which, i guess, brings us back to the wide range of responses Cole received to his original question: “How to Make Art That Confronts the Darkness (Or Not)”
i think our answers may all come down to how we respond to the word: “confront” ... which then makes me wonder if “confront” is the best word to use in this instance?
It's a fair point. Maybe "respond to" is a better choice of words? But my concern there is that too many people very quickly retreat to the "people need to laugh and forget how terrible everything is", which has always felt to me like a way to justify making something disinterested in the actual experience of living in the world.
I've only seen it twice and it's been about 20 years, but my memory is I loved it and it's one of many examples of Preston Sturges being both hilarious and socially conscious.
I straddled the worlds of fine art and fashion for many years, making a living making clothes and making an effort to show in galleries. i never had much success in the fine art world, and it's possible because people didn't perceive my art as being "political", (It was too pretty, I am a colorist, and was doing color theory work in textiles. Think Josef Albers/Christopher Wool) So I change careers, and am a counselor to artists. I talk all the time about the practice of making art and the existential reason for it. I have come to understand that any effort of artistic expression is a victory against anti-creativity/anti-intellectualism. I often think of my counseling practice as a tent behind the battlefields, caring for people coming in from the battles of making art against the darkness, making art for justice, even making art for beauty. In the end, what counts most is the freedom to make the art as personal expression, what ever it is. Fighting for that ability in life is the basic political act in art making.
This is fascinating, Alice, and I'm so glad you've weighed in. I had hoped you would. So, if I understand you correctly, the act of creation itself is an act of political defiance in a way?
Yes, just being able to make something that is based on personal expression, not a commercial directive of some sort is a very radical thing. Of course, no one who makes art for a living ever counts on their work being purely their own creative expression, there are varying levels of compromise to get stuff made. The ability to think in a way that is not solely driven by commercial or societal demands is very freeing, and is often in conflict with the powers that be. I'm speaking from the POV of the artist, but your question about whether artists are supposed to make a certain kind of work that reflects the times may be more focused on the public who sees the work and whether they can be influenced. I think that is also a choice an artist should get to make, perhaps their work isn't the type that would be necessarily considered political or activist, but comes from a place that resonates for them.
Art is of the world, not removed from it. The artist has responsibility as we all do, but an additional one, to help us understand. Through understanding we can make change.
More people comprehend the brutality of war from Picasso’s Guernica than know about the historical event or even the name Franco. That painted image persists through time. Artists must meet the moment.
I fear we're the minority in this position, but I'm glad to read an answer that at least sounds like me. I just did an interview with a leading UK immigration research/campaigner, and we got into Dylan almost entirely walking away from political music when his voice could've changed the world. I've always had trouble appreciating Dylan's work from around 1975 on as a result. There are exceptions, but it always feels hollow to me in some way.
But it's easier to do it by yourself as a indie writer/artist than if you are employed by a company with corporate biases. And it's also better to do it metaphorically than calling out real names.
Jonathan Swift did it metaphorically in "A Modest Proposal" --- in which he suggested the poor Irish sell their children as food to the rich to solve poverty, overpopulation, and economic hardship in Ireland.
Drawing from poet Robert Browning's statement that "art can tell a truth obliquely," I am using the horror figures of the werewolf and the vampire to confront political darkness. For example, in one piece, I have a werewolf take on the sex traffickers and pedophiles. In another, the werewolf is a stand-in for toxic masculinity. In yet another, the vampire stands for the oppressed foreigner and immigrant that colonial powers have always repressed - - in the same way that England aligned with Turkey to fight Romanian independence (during Stoker's time) and in the same way that Hitler's Third Reich tried to exterminate anyone not of the Aryan race. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I would add a link to my work, Cole, but I know you frown on that. Did I recognize the movie poster from "The Exorcist" here?
RE: Confronting the political darkness in our time via horror tropes . . . . . . . Dracula: The Foreigner as Scapegoat (Part 1) Bram Stoker's novel is less a horror story than a colonial anxiety dream dressed up in a cape https://substack.com/@greenwichvillagepoet/p-188993359
‘Responsibility’ feels a bit coercive. But all of us need themes and here’s this very compelling one bringing us its leash and putting its paws on our knee. How can we pass up an opportunity like this?
Others have already said this better than me but I think it is an artist’s job to respond to the world around them. For some that is confrontation but for others I hope it is seeing what is still good behind all that is problematic. It is important to have perspectives which both interrogate and illuminate, but I believe escapism is equally vital in order to maintain both hope and sanity. I personally want to be reminded of the beauty in the world when I feel at my most despairing so I think we need artists who speak out and artists who comfort, although there is a fine line between comfort and complicity. Basically, I don’t want to only be reminded of how awful everything is but I also don’t want to be lied to. Not sure I’ve given you an answer here!
I think it's the "lied to" that I struggle with. If escapism is truly empty calories, as we say, if it has no point except to entertain, then I deem it pure fantasy. I'm not against this existing and I even enjoy it, but society has tended to achieve an equilibrium with it. That equilibrium is off, the fantasists seem to have taken over, and the art that matters seems more difficult to find than ever. I mean, if one more person says something like, "Your sex scenes are great. Have you ever thought about writing romantasy? It's hot right now," I will quite probably murder them. An additional observation here is: whenever a great film that tries to do something original or explore difficult ideas, we all gasp and say something like, "Remember when films like these used to get made all the time?" Same with protest music. That used to be commonplace. Now, it's so rare that you feel shocked when any singer says something potentially controversial in their work.
I don’t think we should have an expectation of artists. Expectations suppress creativity. That said, the current state of the world will inspire great art, as it should. I don’t draw a sharp of a distinction between the last year and what’s happened for 30 years in the US. The good news is this episode is transparently ugly, the previous were ugly underneath. The US policy of bombing for liberty and democracy is long standing. It was sad and remains sad, just more obviously ugly now. I hate poetry and soccer as much as the next guy, but war on Iran still feels wrong. I’m pretty sure the US will use poetry and soccer as the Casus belli this week. I think that may be the only excuse left in the quiver.
Maybe one of the things that make it so difficult to "confront the darkness" is that the metaphorical darkness is so exposed you can now see all the horrors that used to hide in it. It's hard to explore a thing that's standing in brutal, ugly detail right in front of you.
I think my thing with this is, if you look throughout human history, you will be hard pressed not to find some sort of discord, conflict, anxiety, and other darkness society is contending with at any given point; and yet, the artists keep on in the production of their vocations. There's some stuff just made to entertain or escape, there's other stuff made to confront and challenge, and regardless of intent both types of art are often retrofitted through historical analysis as actually being 'about' whatever thing the historian decides the society was dealing with at the time. Some entertainment stuff is too superficial to survive the seriousness of the times, other confrontational stuff is too dated to last outside their contemporary provocations.
This all returns us to navigating, as individual artists, what you can do and whether what you can do fits your best sense of values and self. There are a lot of great art, artists, and art movements birthed out of a need to confront society directly. There are others that sought to transcend those issues by means of beauty and awe. You do you.
Personally, I slowed down focusing on making movies to try to get involved in activism in 2017-2018, and I just couldn't keep on it, I crashed out pretty hard. I was getting back into making my own stuff when the pandemic happened, and unlike so many people on social media who were like "Hip hip hooray, time for me to be alone at home and finally DO THE THING!", I was completely unproductive and incapable of creative work until around 2022 when things started opening up again.
Both show that regardless of my intentions to confront the darkness or avoid the darkness, neither worked for me. Now as I've gotten well back into the swing of things, I focus my activism very narrowly to specific networks and groups whose effects I can multiply with small actions, and I just focus on making my art beautiful and planning for a better future. I can't let the darkness determine the course of my life anymore, I tried and it did not go well for me. All I can do is live in it and furiously demand my own agency to create.
I'm incredibly grateful to read this. It's a wonderful alternative view to the one I've stumbled into, probably by virtue of exhaustion-based cynicism and general despair.
Artists have the write, rite, right to choose their level of responsibility in confronting, uncovering, wrongs and systems of destruction, in individuals including themselves, their families, communities, nations, worlds etc. So they must choose how they want to construct their responses. Some will band with other artists or groups, individuals.
Also I feel ruffled by the standard common usage of dark vs light—even though I use it also but I try to counter it.
yeah, i get your issue with "dark vs light" – it all feels a little racism-adjacent, but it's often hard to avoid ... particularly when your confined to the page-count restrictions of a screenplay
I think every one has a choice about whatever they do, but, for me, there is a moral component. A moral responsibility, if you will. If you see someone being victimized, you should speak out, you should act, you should do something. An artist, by choice I suppose, has an amplified voice. Their voice carries a different kind of cultural and social weight. To choose not to use it has always rubbed me as irresponsible. As for the light/dark of it, I'm not sure how to speak around it without drawing attention to that effort. Language, I suppose, fails me. "A responsibility to confront wickedness" or "a responsibility to confront the profound societal woes of our time" seems...inelegant. Any thoughts, Rhea?
the first thing that sprang to mind when i read Cole’s question was Monet’s Water Lilies series of paintings
created between 1914-26 i remember being ^taught^ that some critics and artists were unhappy with these pieces – believing Monet was actively ignoring the horrors of World War 1 – and, after some searching, it seems Monet may have somewhat agreed:
“I got back to work, as it's still the best way to avoid dwelling too much on our sad times, although I'm a little ashamed to think about trivial research on shapes and colours while so many people are suffering and dying for us.” – Monet
but with further searching, i couldn’t find anyone criticising Monet for his subject matter, but rather for his aesthetic choices:
“Monet, rejected by critics in the 19th century for being too radical, was now being criticised in the 20th century for not being radical enough.” – Open Culture
however others see the series as:
“a war memorial to the millions of lives tragically lost in the First World War” – James Payne
---
which, i guess, brings us back to the wide range of responses Cole received to his original question: “How to Make Art That Confronts the Darkness (Or Not)”
i think our answers may all come down to how we respond to the word: “confront” ... which then makes me wonder if “confront” is the best word to use in this instance?
It's a fair point. Maybe "respond to" is a better choice of words? But my concern there is that too many people very quickly retreat to the "people need to laugh and forget how terrible everything is", which has always felt to me like a way to justify making something disinterested in the actual experience of living in the world.
yeah, i get what you're saying ... so i have to ask, given your concerns, what's your thoughts on *Sullivan's Travels*?
note: i haven't seen the movie and only know it by reputation ... i think Robert McKee or some other guru is a fan?
I've only seen it twice and it's been about 20 years, but my memory is I loved it and it's one of many examples of Preston Sturges being both hilarious and socially conscious.
I straddled the worlds of fine art and fashion for many years, making a living making clothes and making an effort to show in galleries. i never had much success in the fine art world, and it's possible because people didn't perceive my art as being "political", (It was too pretty, I am a colorist, and was doing color theory work in textiles. Think Josef Albers/Christopher Wool) So I change careers, and am a counselor to artists. I talk all the time about the practice of making art and the existential reason for it. I have come to understand that any effort of artistic expression is a victory against anti-creativity/anti-intellectualism. I often think of my counseling practice as a tent behind the battlefields, caring for people coming in from the battles of making art against the darkness, making art for justice, even making art for beauty. In the end, what counts most is the freedom to make the art as personal expression, what ever it is. Fighting for that ability in life is the basic political act in art making.
This is fascinating, Alice, and I'm so glad you've weighed in. I had hoped you would. So, if I understand you correctly, the act of creation itself is an act of political defiance in a way?
Yes, just being able to make something that is based on personal expression, not a commercial directive of some sort is a very radical thing. Of course, no one who makes art for a living ever counts on their work being purely their own creative expression, there are varying levels of compromise to get stuff made. The ability to think in a way that is not solely driven by commercial or societal demands is very freeing, and is often in conflict with the powers that be. I'm speaking from the POV of the artist, but your question about whether artists are supposed to make a certain kind of work that reflects the times may be more focused on the public who sees the work and whether they can be influenced. I think that is also a choice an artist should get to make, perhaps their work isn't the type that would be necessarily considered political or activist, but comes from a place that resonates for them.
Art is of the world, not removed from it. The artist has responsibility as we all do, but an additional one, to help us understand. Through understanding we can make change.
More people comprehend the brutality of war from Picasso’s Guernica than know about the historical event or even the name Franco. That painted image persists through time. Artists must meet the moment.
I fear we're the minority in this position, but I'm glad to read an answer that at least sounds like me. I just did an interview with a leading UK immigration research/campaigner, and we got into Dylan almost entirely walking away from political music when his voice could've changed the world. I've always had trouble appreciating Dylan's work from around 1975 on as a result. There are exceptions, but it always feels hollow to me in some way.
If we don't, who will?
But it's easier to do it by yourself as a indie writer/artist than if you are employed by a company with corporate biases. And it's also better to do it metaphorically than calling out real names.
Jonathan Swift did it metaphorically in "A Modest Proposal" --- in which he suggested the poor Irish sell their children as food to the rich to solve poverty, overpopulation, and economic hardship in Ireland.
Great reference!
Yes- that’s an excellent example.
Drawing from poet Robert Browning's statement that "art can tell a truth obliquely," I am using the horror figures of the werewolf and the vampire to confront political darkness. For example, in one piece, I have a werewolf take on the sex traffickers and pedophiles. In another, the werewolf is a stand-in for toxic masculinity. In yet another, the vampire stands for the oppressed foreigner and immigrant that colonial powers have always repressed - - in the same way that England aligned with Turkey to fight Romanian independence (during Stoker's time) and in the same way that Hitler's Third Reich tried to exterminate anyone not of the Aryan race. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I would add a link to my work, Cole, but I know you frown on that. Did I recognize the movie poster from "The Exorcist" here?
It is THE EXORCIST! As for your work, do you have a link to one of the stories you've referenced here? Share away!
RE: Confronting the political darkness in our time via horror tropes . . . . . . . Dracula: The Foreigner as Scapegoat (Part 1) Bram Stoker's novel is less a horror story than a colonial anxiety dream dressed up in a cape https://substack.com/@greenwichvillagepoet/p-188993359
AND
How a Colonial Reading of “Dracula” Reflects Contemporary News Headlines (part 2) Are we not watching a recognizable echo of that hysteria? https://substack.com/@greenwichvillagepoet/p-189116703
‘Responsibility’ feels a bit coercive. But all of us need themes and here’s this very compelling one bringing us its leash and putting its paws on our knee. How can we pass up an opportunity like this?
I don't know if I feel it as coercive, as much as a warning that I will judge you if you don't meet your responsibility. Ha!
Others have already said this better than me but I think it is an artist’s job to respond to the world around them. For some that is confrontation but for others I hope it is seeing what is still good behind all that is problematic. It is important to have perspectives which both interrogate and illuminate, but I believe escapism is equally vital in order to maintain both hope and sanity. I personally want to be reminded of the beauty in the world when I feel at my most despairing so I think we need artists who speak out and artists who comfort, although there is a fine line between comfort and complicity. Basically, I don’t want to only be reminded of how awful everything is but I also don’t want to be lied to. Not sure I’ve given you an answer here!
I think it's the "lied to" that I struggle with. If escapism is truly empty calories, as we say, if it has no point except to entertain, then I deem it pure fantasy. I'm not against this existing and I even enjoy it, but society has tended to achieve an equilibrium with it. That equilibrium is off, the fantasists seem to have taken over, and the art that matters seems more difficult to find than ever. I mean, if one more person says something like, "Your sex scenes are great. Have you ever thought about writing romantasy? It's hot right now," I will quite probably murder them. An additional observation here is: whenever a great film that tries to do something original or explore difficult ideas, we all gasp and say something like, "Remember when films like these used to get made all the time?" Same with protest music. That used to be commonplace. Now, it's so rare that you feel shocked when any singer says something potentially controversial in their work.
I don’t think we should have an expectation of artists. Expectations suppress creativity. That said, the current state of the world will inspire great art, as it should. I don’t draw a sharp of a distinction between the last year and what’s happened for 30 years in the US. The good news is this episode is transparently ugly, the previous were ugly underneath. The US policy of bombing for liberty and democracy is long standing. It was sad and remains sad, just more obviously ugly now. I hate poetry and soccer as much as the next guy, but war on Iran still feels wrong. I’m pretty sure the US will use poetry and soccer as the Casus belli this week. I think that may be the only excuse left in the quiver.
Maybe one of the things that make it so difficult to "confront the darkness" is that the metaphorical darkness is so exposed you can now see all the horrors that used to hide in it. It's hard to explore a thing that's standing in brutal, ugly detail right in front of you.