Good Art is Moving

ArtPrize 2014 has not officially begun and already there are protests about some installations. Silohuettes of armed gunpersons are atop the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (UICA). Some are calling them "snipers." They look the same to me as the Secret Service Officers who patrolled our few tall buildings when then Senator Obama campaigned here...or when back in the 1980s while I was living in Macon, GA, officers held guns atop buildings when Ronald Reagan spoke. In both cases, I was very aware of them and respected their authority.

I did not know that they were Secret Service agents. They did not show ID. I just assumed and believed the media.

But this post is not about the media, nor the Secret Service. It's about the purpose of art.

The purpose of art is to make us uncomfortable. To re-think, reconsider, or feel differently.

Art provokes.

Art is music, literature, visual media, experiential, staged and spontaneous.

Art happens to me when:

• I was 16 and heard the cadenza in the first movement of the Prokofiev 2nd Piano Concerto and worried that the pianist might die from passion and effort (he didn't).
• I hear an overture of a Broadway musical performed exquisitely and think of the passion of the composer, because becoming a composer of musical theatre is nearly suicidal, at least in terms of making a living.
• I hear Kurt Elling sing the words of Michigan poet, Theodore Roethke.
• I see a person help another person, especially if that offering of hand is spontaneous.
• My heart opens to love of a friend.
• My heart breaks...because of loss or sudden, unexpected change.
• I walk through the forest and see how many shades of green there are in nature.
• I have a rough paddle down a seemingly calm river and friends and strangers offer advice and helping hands. And an elderly gentleman picks me up while hitchhiking back to my truck.
• I arrange things nicely in our pop-up camper.
• When I watch the news and see stories of how humanity is sacrificed for power.
• I become so angry with the world that I weep.
• I regain my faith in the present.
  

I hope that as a community, we can reconsider art. That it's powerful and can make us grow through being startled, uncomfortable, tearful, joyful, and gleeful.