The Artist in a Time of Crisis
We are all in unchartered waters. My heart goes out to everyone who now finds themselves unemployed, alone, scared about keeping a roof over their head and the bills paid. And I think about all of the struggling artists who have cobbled together restaurant, bar, catering, and babysitting work in order to pursue their training. Even in good times, the struggle is real, managing 30-40 hours of work with 20-30 hours of classroom and outside homework. When you have a dream and a passion to create, the sacrifice is worth it. But now, that has been upended, halted in the blink of an eye by a force outside of our control. In an instant, all of us have been forced to adjust our priorities, along with our daily life. We are in crisis. How does the artist navigate this new reality? How does the struggling actor hold onto their artistic voice while trying to survive a global pandemic? These are tough questions. I think that we must look to the past, to the art that rose out of the tragedy and turmoil of human history, in order to get inspiration and hope. Art has always been the balm for the soul in times of crisis.
I remember the first time I saw Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. His iconic painting in 1937 about the Nazi bombing of the Spanish town of Guernica. It’s a gigantic mural which is now considered to be one of the world’s greatest expressions of the horror and injustice of war. To take the reality of casual destruction and war, to turn that into something beautiful and yet also disturbing and unsettling is one of the artist’s essential roles. It must have been utterly terrifying to see your homeland invaded and indiscriminately bombed. But despite that, Picasso produced one of his greatest works.
"My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. In the picture I am painting which I shall call Guernica, I am expressing my horror of the military caste which is now plundering Spain into an ocean of misery and death."
-Pablo Picasso
Alexander Solzhenitsyn became a literary prophet when, as a citizen of the Soviet Union wrote his famous book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962. His disturbing account of life in a Soviet run prison camp helped shed light on the horrors of authoritarian and totalitarian persecution. His other book Gulag Archipelago was also a protest of the estimated 60 million Soviet citizens condemned to hard labor in his country. He believed that the artist had a responsibility to confront and expose the lies of government.
“It is within the power of writers and artists to do much more: to defeat the lie!”
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
W.E.B. Debois wrote The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. It is considered on of the classic works in American Literature, and became a cornerstone for understanding the African American experience. His courage and resilience in the face of bigotry and hatred helped lay the groundwork for the African-American artist.
“Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself.”
- W.E.B. DuBois
Now, as I write you from Guatemala, where I am staying with my wife and her family, unable to return to NYC for the foreseeable future, I struggle to find a creative and worthy outlet. Now is a time to save your life, save your art, and testify to what you are baring witness to. That was the advice Maggie Flanigan gave to our community a few weeks ago, and I cling to that advice. I am also inspired by a great article in the NY Times by Emily Esfahani Smith https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/opinion/coronavirus-mental-health.html), who spoke eloquently of the need for tragic optimism. It is ok to feel the despair and distress of our current
times. But rather than try to find ways to be happy, search for how to put meaning into the time you now have. Resilient people, even in the darkest of times, find the good, and put meaning into what they do. That’s how happiness will reveal itself to you. We must all learn to suffer well. How we respond to this adversity will sustain us in the hours of our anxiety and despair.
Be resilient my friends.