Art Is Dark Stuff…Just Like We Need It to Be
Some art is pretty. Some art matches the couch and sits nicely in the centre of a wall. Some art depicts peaceful, nostalgic, pastoral scenes, or gives soothing splashes of tranquil, misty, abstract hues. Some art makes us exhale in relief. It doesn’t raise the hair on the back of our neck or entice us to look away. It doesn’t make us squirm and it doesn’t challenge us. It’s just nice. It’s just kind of there.
But typically when we think of art, the good art anyway, the stuff that sticks in our minds, this isn’t what we picture, is it? We don’t fill museums and galleries with sheer, unfettered loveliness. Featured exhibits at reputable institutions aren’t built on pretty or nice. We generally fill the walls of these buildings with all manner of things weird, disturbing, asymmetrical, blurry, shadowed, and jagged. This art is confusing, ambiguous, sometimes even infuriating. This art isn’t pretty or nice, and it isn’t just there.
It's rough, dark stuff, this thing that’s supposed to delight and enlighten us, to give us something interesting on which to feast our senses. A lot of it is confusing, and messed up, a proverbial junk drawer of ideas. Art is about head scratching, second (and third and fourth) looks, of not knowing exactly what to think. It shakes us and makes us question all kinds of things. Art is saying the quiet parts of being human, out loud. Art is flawed, complicated, messy, and sometimes nasty.
And so are we.
Which is exactly why we need art. Humans do have our lovely moments, but there’s nothing about us that’s anywhere near perfect. Art happens when we channel the less-than-perfect part of ourselves into something else, something where we can look at it with a bit of perspective. Art is where we get to be proudly imperfect. It’s where we get to screw up, misstep, regret, misspeak, and maybe occasionally, accidentally get something right. Art is a perpetual work in progress.
And so are we.
It's not just visual art that slinks away from pretty and nice. We crave minor chords in music, the blues, the melancholy stuff. We watch dancers physically re-enact rage and despair. We don’t pay to see plays in which everything goes exactly to plan. Novels and poetry without conflict don’t get published. True, there are happy notes to be found in all of these, but they don’t shy away from the dark stuff. The dark stuff can be the thing that makes them captivating.
The more popular, poignant themes of art certainly aren’t all sugary sweet. Art speaks of love, but in many cases, it’s the infuriating, ephemeral, unrequited variety. Art celebrates beauty, but in many cases, it’s the beauty that’s found by digging through a whole lot of ugly. Art isn’t afraid to take on hate, war, peace, change, and death. If we’re being honest, art is generally about the bumpy bits, the things that don’t run smoothly. That’s not to say that art can’t be celebratory, but often what it celebrates is that we’ve survived the nasty stuff, that we’ve bravely stared the ick in its ugly face and managed to carry on.
We don’t generally look to artists themselves to be sweetness and light. In studying the minds behind the work, we’re curious about their quirks and their strange habits. Sometimes we learn that they were/are flustered, obsessive, rejected, or ignored. Art isn’t easy, and a life spent pursuing it isn’t easy either. The process of making art, the training, the practice, are decidedly messy. Art takes time, lots of mistakes, and re-dos. Artists spend years trying to find their voice, build skills, hone their style, while simultaneously trying to keep themselves fed, handling criticism, and keep the creative trains running.
All of this is why, 500 years after Shakespeare, we’re still watching his plays about tragic flaws. It’s why impressionists and surrealists, with their blurry take on reality, have been so influential. It’s why not everyone smiles in photographs, why the Mona Lisa looks tired, and why poetry doesn’t have to rhyme. It’s why Miles Davis advised that if you hit a wrong note, you should make up for it with the one that follows.
For all of the time that we’ve been human, we’ve had art to help us unpack all of the parts of ourselves that we don’t quite understand. Art has been a safe space to put ourselves under scrutiny, to understand what makes us tick. Art, even the abstract, weird stuff, has kept us grounded and honest about who we are, what we’re capable of, and where we fall short.
In pretty much every aspect of human existence, whether it be politics, health, education, or our relationship with nature, we are showing our true colours as complicated, confused, and cranky. There’s dark stuff happening with us right now. At this juncture in our history, we should be clinging to art, white-knuckled and wide-eyed. Art can’t be a luxury or a diversion. More than ever, it needs to be a space in which we can be brutally honest, and to understand ourselves, warts and all. It needs to be spark dialogue and critical thought. It needs to be a tool for solving problems, a uniting force, and a catalyst for change. Every single one of us needs time and space to make it (and no, we don’t have to go pro), appreciate it, and share it.
And no, it’s not going to match the couch or fit on the wall. All the best things don’t.