A person undeservedly close to me recently scoffed at the words of a set designer here in NYC recently. They said, “It’s not worth it. It’s just art.” 

This person intended, of course, to aim this barb at me and my life’s work. At someone who had structured their entire life around encouraging people to make what they feel called to make. And in some ways it’s not worth commenting on the idea, it’s worth leaving alone. 

Except the idea is rather prolific these days. As far as I know, this person actually believes this. But leave the person alone for the minute and treat with the idea:

It’s actually rather important to take on the lie head-on in a public sphere. You’ll notice I gave no indication of who this person is. The person — even the event — is unimportant. The idea — actually the opposite idea, that nothing is “just art” — is of almost infinite importance.

Why?

Others think this: that it’s “just art.” Why bother addressing it? 

There’s no such thing as “mere art.” There’s no such thing as “mere science.” There is such a thing as “mere cynicism” as opposed to “just cynicism.” The reason being, of course, that art inherently refers to what is beyond itself.

Consider this:

Principally, Monsieur Proust, I want to thank you for confirming me in my deepest and most cherished superstitions about the arts.  You were a man with no theology (I cannot say whether you still are), and with no precise God as such; but, as you yourself noted, your entire vision of reality had a religious quality to it.  

One of the most moving passages in À la recherche du temps perdu is one in which you reflect upon the vocation of the true artist—which you characterize as a kind of priestly or vatic rôle, a hieratic mediation between this world and another, higher, purer world.  This, at least, is what I wish to believe: that the greatest of artists, far more than philosophers or theologians or saints or prophets, occupy an indispensable station in the Great Chain of Being, there in the Platonic metaxy, intermediate between the realm of the eternal splendors and their shadowy reflections in the world of the senses; that, like the angels, they enjoy at once a cognitio vespertina of reality and a cognitio matutina, and somehow, as even the angels are impotent to do, effortlessly combine the two in their art; and that, like the “great daemon” Eros in the Symposium, they are bearers of oracles and dreams from the “really real” there above to the “land of unlikeness” here below.  

Your great novel makes me all the more able to believe in a certain ontology, a certain metaphysics, a certain vision of the whole to which I have always been entirely devoted, but of which I need again and again to be reassured.  So, for that above all, you have my profoundest gratitude.

— David Bentley Hart, Happy 150th Monsieur Proust

That’s the role of the artist, particularly in a society devoid of temples. Is it possible for an artist to sacrifice human souls on the altar of their art? 

Is it possible for temples so to do?

Or — gasp — churches and, the ones who started and perfected the historical trend: engineering alchemists (that is to say cultish chemists) who burned witches? 

The question is whether moral devotion to a cause beyond the art is ever worth killing for? As opposed to merely dying for? I would argue art can’t be good if you’re killing — or wounding — for it. But that’s a different question than whether it’s “mere art,” that is to say if the art refers to nothing beyond itself, it’s own physicality, inherently worthless. Meaningless.

Not even Solomon believed this in his oft-quoted Ecclesiastes. Meet me in the comments, I’m happy to debate you on that point.

It’s almost impossible for it to be the case that art is meaningless. I can think of no instance where this is true and even less so in any case where the art was searching for the good and the true and the beautiful and the really real. 

Similarly with “mere science.” Knowledge, at some point, eventually refers to all knowledge. Because of merge, words refer to other words. That’s how the irreducible complexity of language works. Check your Chomsky. Check… just the footnotes of literally any academic abstract in a publication requiring citation.

But! 

There is a thing as mere cynicism.

To be merely cynical is to set yourself up as a judge who destroys. Just cynicism would be the work of a just judge to hold up meaning, to hold up goodness, to hold up truth in any exploration of art or science. Any exploration of meaning. 

But mere cynicism, on the other hand, would be judging for the sake of being judgmental. That’s a power addiction. An addiction to being in charge. 

An addiction to being the only one in the room who could possibly be correct. The only clever one (remember: “clever” is a derogatory term in the U.K. for this very reason).  

An addiction to being the one towards whom all relationships draw near. 

Setting yourself up as God, in other words. 

And you know plenty of these folks. They’re the folks who are so obsessed with being consulted for advice or information that they’ll tear  anything down to get there. They’re the folks who are so obsessed with their own ego that they’re incapable of admitting fault. They’re insistent upon being elected judge. 

They’re the kinds of folks who look at the entirety of human creativity — at all our beautiful hands have made in order to speak well of Beauty of the Infinite — and says, “It’s just art. It’s not worth it.”

It’s almost breathtaking, that level of cynicism. It’s atheistic, which is fine if you’re an atheist — you’re being consistent. Good on you. But this person claimed to believe in God. Here’s one of the truest syllogisms I know:

1. Mozart’s music exists.
2. Therefore God exists.

You either get it or you don’t. If you don’t, you’re likely to say, “It’s just art.”

Mercy on your soul, if you truly believe that. 

And if you think you really do.

You don’t. 

Not really.

So live consistently with what you believe, stop saying nonsense, and go sketch something with a child.

What could be true is that the industrialization of creativity — particularly in the film world and Warhol’s factory — isn’t worth running over writers and set designers and bit role actors for the sake of your creative vision or, worse, mere profit.

That isn’t worth it. It’s not worth it to fire a few hundred extras every other day because your lead actress can’t decide if she wants next week’s shoot to be in NYC or L.A. That’s evil.

But that’s not the art’s fault.

That’s the industry’s fault.

The industrialization of art.

Mere capitalism.

Mere cynicism.

Mere abyss.

Sort of the opposite of art, that. But don’t blame the existence of film for the evil. Blame the tourist actress and the company beholden to her name headlining the show for profit.

The cynic says it’s just art.

I say it’s everything:

The place where divine abstraction and human sod cross. Art sciences.

What’s made, means.

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Photo by redcharlie | @redcharlie1 on Unsplash