Yesterday I visited the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh to see the excellent Artists Rooms exhibition "Joseph Beuys: A Language of Drawing". It was so refreshing to see how he linked drawings of different media to his ideas and made them work together. Here is a quotation from the exhibition:
Beuy's work took many forms, employing all kinds of media to create single sculptures large and small, objects for vitrines, films, "Actions" and lectures illustrated with blackboard drawings. Beuys regarded drawing as the "first visible form" of his ideas. He explained, "I ask questions, I put forms of language on paper, a language to stimulate more searching discussion". The drawings, he felt, became a "kind of reservoir that I can utilise again and again"
I think that Hari Kunzru puts the case for tolerance and understanding very well in this recent article
Jonathan Franzen claimed he won’t write about race because of limited
‘firsthand experience’, while Lionel Shriver hopes objection to
‘cultural appropriation is a passing fad’. So should there be boundaries
on what a novelist can write about?
Hari Kunzru
Clearly, if writers were barred from creating characters with
attributes that we do not “own” (gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation,
and so on), fiction would be impossible. Stories would be peopled by
clones of the author. Since trespassing into otherness is a foundation
of the novelist’s work, should we restrict ourselves in some way, so as
to avoid doing violence to those who identify with our characters? The
injunction to refrain from “cultural appropriation” sounds like a call
for censorship, or at best a warning to self-censor, an infringement of
the creative liberty to which so many surprising people profess
themselves attached.
It is true that the politics of offence are used to shut down
dissident voices of all kinds, frequently in minority communities, and
the understanding of culture as a type of property to which ownership
can be definitively assigned is, at the very least, problematic. Should
the artist go forth boldly, without fear? Of course, but he or she
should also tread with humility. Note that I do not say, “with care”. I
don’t believe any subject matter should a priori be off limits to
anyone, or that harm necessarily flows from the kind of ventriloquism
that all novelists perform. Quite the opposite. Attempting to think
one’s way into other subjectivities, other experiences, is an act of
ethical urgency. For those who have never experienced the luxury of
normativity, the warm and fuzzy feeling of being the world’s default
setting, humility in the face of otherness seems like a minimal demand.
Yet it appears that for some, the call to listen before speaking, to
refrain from asserting immediate authority, is so unfamiliar that it
feels outrageous. I’m being silenced! My freedom is being abridged! Norm
is unaccustomed to humility because he has grown up as master of the
house. All the hats are his to wear. For the deviant others, who came in
by the kitchen door, it has always been expected, even demanded. Good
writers transgress without transgressing, in part because they are
humble about what they do not know. They treat their own experience of
the world as provisional. They do not presume. They respect people, not
by leaving them alone in the inviolability of their cultural
authenticity, but by becoming involved with them. They research. They
engage in reciprocal relationships. It does not seem like a particular
infringement of liberty to pass through the world without being its
owner, unless someone else is continually asserting property rights over
the ground beneath your feet. The panicked tone of the accusations of
censorship leads me to suspect that what is being asserted has little to
do with artistic freedom per se, and everything to do with a bitter
fight to retain normative status, and the privileges that flow from it.
The solution is simple, my fearful friends. Give up. Accept that some
things are not for you, and others are not about you. You will find you
have lost nothing. It may even feel like a weight off your shoulders.
Put down that burden and pull up a chair. You might hear something you
haven’t heard before. You will, at least, hear some new stories.
asks "How can you express love in art? One way is to make it with love. Art created by a devoted hand projects its kindness into the space around it and the hearts of those who view it".
