Application 1: When does an artist produce a work, and when action?
In Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition, she describes labor, work, and action. Labor and work are necessary parts of life, where if responsibilities were not fulfilled it could be a threat to their survival. Action, however, would be providing a sort of purpose. So when it comes to an artist producing work, it would be labor when it is being done solely to support the artist, but it would be action when there is meaning to the work and if it evokes some sort of emotion or movement in an individual or society. Action is necessary for the growth of society.
I find it interesting how in modern day society, we might have a different view of an artist. We wouldn’t necessarily support an artist to make work as a living; many who want to do art are discouraged from doing so, told they wouldn’t be able to survive making art. Their art may be phenomenal, evoking emotions in all who see it. However, we wouldn’t find it as important unless this artist managed to gain popularity; only then will they be supported, and it will not be for their economic gain anymore but for our pleasure.
Art is almost always viewed as a method for self expression - and, in this way, always acts as a mechanism for ‘action’ from Arendt’s point of view. Arendt describes action as a means to “reveal [human] unique distinctness.” She says that it is through action and speech that “men distinguish themselves instead of being merely distinct; they are the modes in which human beings appear to each other” (176). Assuming that everyone who participates in the creation of art is doing so because they have a passion for it, then art would always be considered a form of action/ expression of individuality.
ReplyDeleteI push against the idea of creating art as work because I don’t think art necessarily has a clear beginning and end- art is more about the process than the final product. Furthermore, many artists like to believe that their art continues to develop after they’ve ‘finished’ it through how audiences interpret their piece- which can differ based on the context which it is being viewed in. I think it’s difficult to constrain art to a finite end in this sense.