The history of the European arts since the Middle Ages is a history of the struggle for autonomy. In the Middle Ages the artist had the status of a craftsman who, in the service of the Church, had to give shape to content prescribed by it. Over time artists freed themselves from this total tutelage and created a greater variety of forms of expression, such as polyphony in the church music of the late Middle Ages or central perspective in Renaissance painting. But they were still dependent on the Church or the court that commissioned them.
The rise of bourgeois society in the 19th century went hand in hand with the idea of the independence of the arts, above all of music. The “cult of genius” granted the artist the right to create autonomous works of art that were purely an expression of his personality. In modernism this approach of “l’art pour l’art” (art is sufficient unto itself) was radicalised further and further. Artists created a role for themselves completely outside society, in which freedom and individuality were the highest values.
Now that complete artistic freedom has been won, going any further down this road is neither possible nor even meaningful. On the contrary, the question arises of how artists handle the freedom they have won responsibly. After centuries in which a work of art was judged mainly by whether it was “new” and whether it met the laws of “progress in the material” (Adorno), it is time to ask other questions.
The first question can no longer be: “Is it new?” Far more important is whether the artist’s person and work are at one, whether the work of art speaks to people in their lives, and whether it is convincing in content and emotion. The questions ought to be: “What does the work of art do to the people who encounter it? Does it help them solve the problems of their lives? Does it open up perspectives for shaping reality in a more living way? Does the artist contribute to communication in society, or does he isolate himself in a secret language of his own devising?”
Of course it cannot be a matter of giving up the freedom once won and orienting oneself solely by what the audience expects. Criticism and provocation remain an essential part of responsible art in particular. Even so, it is important that artists once again understand themselves as part of the society they help to shape through their work.
The paradigm shift sketched above does not come from nowhere; it draws on living lines of tradition in European and above all in African art. In the 20th century, artists such as Joseph Beuys or Bertolt Brecht understood their work as a form of social engagement. Regardless of their aesthetic and creative quality, artistic statements of this kind naturally also lay themselves open to attack on the level of content. This is especially clear with Brecht, part of whose work has been practically overtaken by the failure of the socialist experiment.
From earlier centuries, J. S. Bach above all should be named, who bound his work as a composer inseparably to Christianity. And the proclamation of faith by medieval artists can surely not be put down only to their dependent position; it is also an expression of their own conviction.
In African societies, conveying religious, ethical and political content is fundamentally one of the tasks of a work of art. The quality of a piece of music, a mask or a poem is judged by whether it does justice to these tasks. The political and religious engagement of Black jazz and pop musicians such as Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Bob Marley, Stevie Wonder and many others has one of its roots here.
I think that a change in the way we look at art is needed in the present situation, and that the relationship between society and the artist must be defined anew. It is important to end the art world’s fruitless circling around itself and to forge a living connection with the people outside it, one that benefits both sides.
Postscript 2014
How much the communicative element shapes the way African people feel about art became very clear to me once again on a journey to Uganda. We were climbing a mountain with a guide, and during a break one of us was listening to some music on a smartphone: experimental minimal electronica. The guide asked if he could listen too, and then stood completely baffled before this music. The question he asked was: “What does that mean?” He did not find the music too weird, or too boring, or whatever other criteria intrinsic to music there may be. It was simply and utterly incomprehensible to him how anyone could make music without a communicative message, without a particular meaning.
We then talked for a while about the different ideas of art in Africa and Europe. The guide was (as I have mostly found Africans to be in general) completely open and unafraid towards our ideas. Even so, he naturally kept to his view that music without meaning was strange and ultimately superfluous.