Synthesis Journal 3

I. The Elitism of Western Civilization, continued

"...be assured that just because Western civilization has decided on a certain set of rules to judge art, it doesn't mean that those rules or ideas are universally true..." (p 58).

Art rejects the experts' judgments, it pays no attention to what "they" say because it has its own message to convey. We are all artists in our own right, just by virtue of being human. It is ingrained in our nature to create, to express ourselves through whatever means accessible. A child does not use crayons to scribble on blank walls because he wants to please his parents; he does it to fill an emptiness in his environment, to fulfill his creative urge, to express himself in a way that his limited vocabulary is inefficient to reveal. Would a museum curator call such work "art"? Of course not, but the child doesn't care. It is art, nonetheless.

II. The "Art IS Life" Connection, continued

"'Why do I draw?' asked a mental patient in Maine. 'It's like a dog wetting up a tree so that other dogs will know he was there'" (p 78).

If the creation of art is the communication of an identity, then the reason we draw - or write, or dance, or sing, or cook - is to express who we are, to make our mark on this world, to say "Kilroy Was Here." We human beings have an insatiable need to be appreciated and remembered, to be valued for who we are by our contemporaries and for generations to come. We don't necessarily want everyone to like us - we just want them to know us. Whether or not the secondary reasons for doing so include a welcome sign or a warning to back off, we mark our territories as an expression of our existence.

III. The Art of Storytelling

"Art that tells stories is fascinating...because of its openness to textual and linguistic analysis, and to social perceptions of the role of truth and lies, as well as their consequences" (p 101).

Art that tells stories is an expression of who we perceive ourselves to be at the time the art is created. In that sense, art isn't a "thing" at all. Art is a process of becoming. As a process, the story evolves and what was once true may now be a lie, and what were once lies may now be truth. Art is our vision of the world as a whole and ourselves in particular; that vision reflects not only what we see in reality but what we want to see and what we want to be true. It mirrors what we see as wrong with our world and how we want to change it.