What are the materials of the artist? Can the artist create quality art out of just anything? Trash from the gutter? A finely embroidered robe displaying symbols sacred to a living religion? Another artist’s drawing?
I tend to think anything is the answer. Good people will disagree. And my own principle quails somewhat before the pained reactions of those who see some particular art as attacking them.
In Art & Fear David Bayles and Ted Orland express some ideas about what artists should do:
Artists are wrong in thinking they may “fill their canvasses and monitors with charged particles ‘appropriated’ from other places and times. It is as though you could incorporate the power of the Plains Indian medicine bundle into your work. Or convincingly complete the closing movements to Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. Today, indeed, you can find urban white artists — people who could not reliably tell a coyote from a german shepherd at a hundred feet — incorporating the figure of Coyote the Trickster into their work. A premise common to all such efforts is that power can be borrowed across space and time. It cannot. There’s a difference between meaning that is embodied and meaning that is referenced. As someone once said, no one should wear a Greek fisherman’s hat except a Greek fisherman.” [italics in original]
Bayles & Orland mix a lot of elements in this passage. I disagree with much of it — especially the last line — but I sympathize, too.
Should the Catholic Church be able to order destroyed a replica of the Pope’s clothing that included lots of little swastikas in the stitching? Should a scantily clad cheerleader on the football field have her decorative feather headdress yanked from her head by an irate tribal elder? Should every listener shun an attempt to finish an unfinished musical piece by a dead composer?
I don’t think the Schubert example belongs with the others. Anybody ought to feel free to complete Schubert’s unfinished work. If the resulting music is beautiful the only people offended will be the fierce Schubert partisans. ‘It’s a fraud! That’s not how Schubert would have done it.’ The original, however unfinished, may feel sacred to them, but is it?
I also don’t think the Greek fisherman’s cap belongs with the others. I wore a Greek fisherman’s cap for a while because I thought it looked neat. It was black, worn close to the head (so hid my hair and wasn’t easily blown off by a breeze), and had pretty stitching on the brim. The authors are my first hint that there’s something sacred about a Greek fisherman’s cap, a kind of cultural power that not only does not transfer but in some way offends. Curious to see what I’ve been missing about the Greek fisherman’s cap, I did a little internet searching.
GreekBoston.com says, “Although we traditionally associate these hats with Greek seamen or fishermen, variations of this hat [are] also present in other cultures. They are also known as a mariner’s cap, skipper cap, fiddler cap, or Breton cap. … [M]ost [historians] seem to agree that [the cap] started to become popular [in Greece] in the 1800’s.” Anthony Quinn wore the cap in the Zorba the Greek movie, which made it popular outside Greek fisheries. “John Lennon … wore the hat while the Beatles were at the height of their fame.”
The anonymous Greek Boston author concludes, “Although this hat has been traditionally associated with those involved with the nautical culture in Greece, such as sailors, fishermen, ship captains, etc, there are no rules concerning who can wear them and who can’t.”
I don’t know which is the more authoritative source, Art & Fear or Greek Boston, but I will add that the rather more generic wikipedia entry lumps the Greek fisherman’s cap in with a bunch of similarly-shaped caps and there’s no suggestion in the article that non-Greek-fisherman wearers are phonies or posers or in any way sacrilegious. Or that there is any “power [that is attempting to] be borrowed across space and time” by a kid under a Greek fisherman’s cap. It just looks cool! Marlon Brando wore a leather version in The Wild Ones. Tom of Finland tops off his leathermen in his gay cartoon porn with a similar cap. So it’s got a bit of a butch aura. But ultimately it’s just material in a particular shape.
Bayles & Orland hit closest when they talk about the offensiveness of the appropriation of Native American symbols and regalia. The authors do not mention appropriation of Western religious symbols or objects, but that happens, too. As I said above, I sympathize with people who feel attacked when their sacred symbols are treated in ways that they feel are degrading. But can you make degrading art? Probably? Can you make bad art? Definitely.
If an American Indian artist uses a symbol from her own culture in a nontraditional way, a way that offends traditionalists, is she being a bad girl? In this case I suppose the artist is not “borrow[ing] across space and time;” she’s using local and contemporary material(s) that have power for her (and for a living community). Of course, our Native artist may be a crappy artist or may be misusing the symbol because she was raised outside her natal culture so doesn’t know any better, and what results isn’t really what one would call art. (Maybe bad art.) Say she isn’t Indian at all — and she is using Indian sacred symbols because they look cool. Or she’s making fun of them. Replace “American Indian” with “White Catholic.” Is the artist more or less justified? What if she’s wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap?
On the whole I liked Art & Fear. David Bayles and Ted Orland are trying with this book to lessen the anxiety artists feel. You are not alone, they want you to know. Everybody goes through moments — or years — feeling inadequate, being jealous of others’ success, afraid they are a hasbeen or a nevershallbe. Don’t worry, they say, as they root in their medicine bags for a pick-me-up. Just do it. If it turns out you have to cross space and time to borrow a cup of blue tempera, they might disapprove, but that’s life. Don’t panic.
source:
Art & Fear: observations on the peril (and rewards) of art making
by David Bayles and Ted Orland
1993. The Image Continuum, Santa Cruz CA
5 comments:
In my late teens and into my twenties I wore a succession of cotton corduroy mariner hats, commonly known as "clippers," which are pretty much idential to what you're calling a Greek fisherman's hat. Although they were easy enough to buy—I always used Burton's Tailors—I rarely saw anyone else wearing one. Unlike me to go for a unique look. My dad always wore trilbies and I still own his "good" one but it's a tad too small for me. I always wanted one but even though I'm of an age I should be able to pull it off, they don't feel me. I have a corduroy baseball cap and, in winter, a close-fitting fisherman's beanie both of which I'm very fond of. For most of my adult life, however, I've opted for your classic flat cap with some kind of plaid design. In a charity shop—actually, a vintage clothing shop—I once came across a couple of bowlers and I was sorely tempted.
I have to say I don't really get the whole cultural appropriation fiasco. I'm Scottish, so should I be prancing around in a kilt and a classic Royal Stewart tartan tammy (that would be a tam o' shanter with a pompom in top)? I get mocking a culture but we Scots mock everyone especially ourselves and yet that mocking, that we can stand up to mocking, is a source of pride. Woe betide any culture that takes itself too seriously, I say.
In 2019, artificial intelligence was used to reconstruct the third and fourth movements of Beethoven's Tenth Symphony, which premiered on 9 October 2021, titled 'Beethoven X: The AI Project.' I can just imagine the tizzy some people got into over that but I genuinely don't see the harm in it. We know it's not Beethoven but if, like me, you've listened to the first nine to the point you're actually sick of them—the Sixth especially—then something new, even if it is Beethoven-lite, is a welcome relief. As long as it's not being presented AS Beethoven where's the harm in it? I've heard Brian Newbould and Mario Venzago's completed version of Schubert's 8th Symphony; it did not rock my world.
I understand (or think I understand) the upset around cultural appropriation. It does seem rather inevitable to some degree. We think via the software of "culture" that has been (and continues to be) loaded into the hardware of our brain. It takes effort to define and separate where lines of code have come from and then determine which bits of code are empowering and which bits are stealing power. I'm fascinated by cultures other than our dominant American one. I don't go out of my way to steal from other cultures but, once I'm aware of them, I expect some memes (in original definition of the word) attach themselves to my thinking and creative processes.
That comment from Anonymous is me. Ooops.
What cogent rumination. I remember reading about how some Marvel comic used kachinas as super heroes, and pueblo people protested. Marvel promised not to reprint the comic. I don't have much sympathy for Catholicism's protests of blasphemy or whatever. Nor Islam's, though some of those guys can be pretty darn killy over it. I have more sympathy for Native American sacred stuff just because these are people who've been stomped on a lot and they are doing their best to hang onto a culture despite the boot. Who is allowed to use certain ideas, stories, symbols? Who is the enforcer of such rules?
The people I have sympathy for are those who are struggling to hang onto culture that has been stomped on by big armies and missionaries. How much power a small community has to dictate how you use their -- totems? tales? beliefs? -- is however much you grant them. It's probably polite to avoid intentional distress. Or, once apprised, unintentional. But how much deference you owe I don't know.
Schubert and Beethoven are in the public domain so nobody can sue you if you fiddle with their legacy. The first three Hardy Boys books went into the public domain last year, so anybody who wants to can write sequels to them or republish them. Are the Hardy Boys sacred?
I haven't worn a hat in a long time. I got started wearing caps after I shaved my head and was surprised at how cold the world was. Then it was because I didn't want to have to pay attention to my hair. The cap I wore most frequently was a blue cap like the kind Mao made famous. Did anybody suspect me of trying to cadge Red Guard power?
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