Last weekend, I mentioned that I was thinking about doing the Art by the Inch challenge again this November. And I am so glad that I actually put that down in writing. It got my brain moving and I am starting to prepare for a month of arting, and nothing but arting.

My primary concern is my other major project: my reading goal. I want to read 52 books this year. I am right on target, but if I'm making art instead of reading during November I might have some problems catching up in December.

So I picked out a super short book, just to add one to my tally. Concerning the Spiritual in Art, by the artist Kandinsky. It was lame and stuck up, but there was one passage that resonated with me...

The artist is not born to a life of pleasure. He must not live idle; he has a hard work to perform, and one which often proves a cross to be borne. He must realize that his every deed, feeling, and thought are raw but sure material from which his work is to arise, that he is free in art but not in life.

The artist has a triple responsibility to the non-artists: (1) He must repay the talent which he has; (2) his deeds, feelings, and thoughts, as those of every man, create a spiritual atmosphere which is either pure or poisonous. (3) These deeds and thoughts are materials for his creations, which themselves exercise influence on the spiritual atmosphere. The artist is not only a king, as Peladan says, because he has great power, but also because he has great duties.

Ignoring the lame and stuck up language, the idea that having artistic talent endows us with a duty to use that talent... that idea is significant to me because I do not use my artistic talent. (Such as it is! ;)

But, strangely, the last sentence about the "king" echoed another quote I wrote down a couple days before. From Dominion of Love:

As the French say, Noblesse oblige. "Nobility obligates," it does not entitle.

The page I got that quote from was saying that since humans have absolute control over animals, we owe service to animals, to protect and love them. We are not entitled to torture and kill them, as we do to food animals (and lab animals and hunted animals and zooed animals and culled animals etc). As the book title says, a dominion of love rather than the dominion of torture that we have.

So, I'm thinking about my responsibilities as an artist and my obligations as a human. But just in case I didn't get it... Today, I was reading some old blog posts. From VeganFreaks 24 July 2006:

As vegans, I think we have a duty not just to avoid products of cruelty, but also to educate and to be activists in our lives.
...
If you’re a geek, help maintain a server that does vegan outreach or support. If you’re an artist, make art to raise consciousness. Harness your talents in a way that is comfortable to you so that we can begin to chip away at this massive monolith of cruelty.

Yep, there's that word "duty" again. sheesh.

Guess I need to get to work.

Static8 > Journal > Archive > 21 Oct 2006 Entry