Art Values & Philosophies

By Daniel Foster

Art is fundamentally about the pursuit of beauty and/or truth.   Beauty is not always truthful, and truth is not always beautiful.  Very few professions work with such important content and tools for change and the humanistic benefit of the individual, family, groups, organizations, communities, and society.

Everyone’s “Wow” is equal and authentic.   We are all visual creatures that become experts about what we love to look at a very early age – and then institutionalized child development and educational processes work to undermine our confidence in our own eyes and natural “response system”, further reinforced in adulthood by the art world elitist establishment and its intellectual and cultural arrogance. Eventually, too many adults don’t know or are too scared to express what they like or don’t like in art.

Trend towards collective vs. isolated impact models.  Competition in the capitalistic marketplace may be good; but, it’s ‘poison’ in the charity/nonprofit world.  Funders/philanthropists create grant competitions for funding between similar-missioned nonprofit organizations in the same definable community.  Ultimately, this produces highly siloed, fragmented, and disorganized community efforts that DO NOT address the systemic causal factors --- but, simply place a “band aid” on the year-after-year problem.  Sustainable impact models require collaborative, coordinated, and leveraged approaches utilizing many diverse leaders/organizations with adequate long-term resource support.  After a century of American philanthropy, the nonprofit sector needs a revolutionary change (like every other major industry/institution in America over 100 years old).  The nonprofit “operating system” has grown arcane, wasteful, and ineffective in addressing the needs of its citizens/communities.  Read “Collective Impact” by Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Art is Content AND Context.  The realm of content has been explored extensively in the 20th century – particularly in the postmodern era...The new frontier in art is comprehensively exploring the ‘contextualization’ of this content into our daily public and private lives and hour-by-hour “consciousness”.  Many civic-public arts programs are a crude form of “tokenism” …A token nod or gesture to the local arts community.  The difference between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ arts community is generally about 2-3 dozen outdoor sculptures/artworks scattered around many square miles of land, walkways, and streets!  Most residents in a ‘good’ art city live without any ‘good’ art in their visual public/outdoor landscape, other than an occasional sculpture or mural observed for a few seconds while in transit. Most offices and workplaces are devoid of ‘good’ or ‘original’ art that reflect the values (and artists) of the local community; and, the same is true for most people’s homes. It’s befuddling that many people who spend $500,000 on a home; and $50,000 on a car; won’t even spend $500 on a good original artwork, instead opting to spend $50 on a generic framed art poster over the sofa.  FYI, the art in your home speaks as loudly about YOU to your family and friends as the car or the home, maybe even more so!

 

Art is the “artifact” of a creative journey/process designed/executed by the artist.   Most great artists are firmly committed to the “process”, recognizing that good ingredients and good processes produce good outputs and results…usually.  The “artifact” is like an artist’s snapshot of his/her journey at a certain moment in time and place.

Art is spiritual technology.   Many artists find their source of inspiration from deep within their soul – a powerful portal to connecting with their deepest spiritual, religious, and philosophical beliefs and sense of purpose.  Thus, artmaking can be a form of spiritual practice which can produce pow...