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The arts and 9/11
Gresham Riley
Patience, patience! or,
The arts and 9/11
GRESHAM RILEY
In the aftermath of 9/11, a New York painter named Elizabeth Murray went public with her anguished thoughts about the ultimate worth of making art after a crisis of such proportions.
“I felt [on 9/11] how futile my artmaking seemed right now,” she wrote in a New York Times op-ed column (Sept. 23, 2001). “How could balancing shapes with line and color have any meaning or be of any use to anyone? …. A good deal of art is going to seem silly and inconsequential now.”
As we observe 9/11’s fifth anniversary, the exercise of taking stock continues, as evidenced by the featured stories in the Inquirer’s Sunday “Arts & Entertainment” section of September 3. Under the heading, “9/11 Five Years Later: Arts in the Aftermath,” the paper’s six principal critics (Carrie Rickey, movies; Carlin Romano, fiction; Edward J. Sozanski, visual arts; David Patrick Stearns, classical music; Jonathan Storm, television; and Dan DeLuca, popular music) assess how well the practitioners of each medium have grappled with the grief, outrage, confusion, shock and fear of that memorable day.
The consensus is: Not very well at all, with rare exceptions in classical music (John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls and Joseph Schwantner’s September Canticles), popular music (Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising); and a volume of photography (Portraits, 9/11, published by the New York Times). The critics offer various reasons for this failure: Insufficient time has passed for artists to assimilate the complexity of the events; undue sensitivity about giving offense; the singularity of the event in contrast to those that last long enough to amount to eras; and, possibly the most ominous of reasons: the inability of static images (paintings, sculpture, photographs) to summarize and explain “the complex political and doctrinal agenda behind the attacks.”
What changed with 9/11?
Yes, taking stock is good for the individual soul and for societal health. Too bad that so little has taken place in the past five years. Much of post-9/11 art is indeed silly and inconsequential, but the events of September 11 had nothing to do with that: It was frivolous and ephemeral all along. I’m willing to accept at face value the negative report card assembled by the critics of the Inquirer. We must not conclude, however, that the making of art is unimportant or that “the balancing of shapes with line and color has no significance in tragic and fearful times.” To the contrary, it is precisely in times of confusion, when we search earnestly for meaning and value, that art can provide the greatest relevance for individuals as well as societies.
Modern secular culture was probably born in 1882 when Friedrich Nietzsche announced in The Gay Science that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” Nietzsche’s point, among other things, was that Western society had destroyed its own belief in God. Humans were the responsible agents because they no longer found adequate the linked notions that truth is grounded in the designs of a Supreme Being, that meaning and value in human life are to be found in those designs, and that both can be realized only in an afterlife.
Although organized religion has hardly disappeared, much of the history of the 20th Century was defined by the quest of modern women and men for clues as to how they should lead their lives in the aftermath of God’s death. And that quest continues.
The search for heaven on Earth
Nietzsche’s answer—one that has found expression throughout the history of humanistic thought— is that human agency is the key for grasping truth, meaning and value. These bedrock virtues are not timeless abstractions that exist independently of what humans think, intend, choose and do. Rather, people’s individual and collective actions are the crucible within which they come to life. Consequently, we needn’t wait until then-and-there to find meaning and value for our lives. Both are possible here-and-now, in this life, because they come to be through our deliberate choices and the actions that follow from those choices.
If indeed it is through human action (complex or simple) that we both create and discover truth, meaning and value, it follows that these virtues find their ideal form in creative acts. This insight brings us back to the arts and their importance.
Art, as the creative and tangible expression of human imagination, is one kind of intentional activity (others include science, philosophy, the writing of history, and statecraft ) that allows us to experience the world and ourselves in novel ways. In the process, art forges distinctive kinds of truth, meaning and value. Far from being futile and barely relevant, art and the making of art (in normal times, but especially in times of crisis) can provide some of the guideposts we seek.
That Iwo Jima photo, for example
So it’s not surprising that art works are sources of consolation and catharsis when we experience hurt, grief or anger, or that they lead us beyond what is safe and comforting to insights and understandings in the midst of confusion. But often, popular art plays these roles rather than fine art. Joe Rosenthal’s photo of the American flag’s being raised on Iwo Jima remains the most powerful image of World War II. Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” paintings translated President Roosevelt’s abstractions of freedom of speech and religion and freedom from fear and want into narrative stories that Middle America could comprehend, thereby giving ordinary people an understanding of why the war was being fought.
Contrary to what some critics have written since the attacks on The World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, the fine arts can be no less responsive to major crises. Picasso’s Guernica (1937) may have been inspired by the Spanish Civil War, but it’s the greatest war painting of the 20th Century. Maya Ying Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington is unique in the multiple roles it plays in our continuing efforts to come to terms with that seemingly pointless war. From thousands of testimonials it is clear that this simple but powerful piece of public sculpture has offered solace to families and individuals. The Memorial also enables us to understand something of the loss and horror of that conflict in ways no journalist account or history can match.
Doubtless the best artistic responses to 9/11 are yet to come. Is the wait worthwhile? In the meantime, should we be spending time, energy and money on the arts in a period of national crisis? Yes, without question. What we need most during these days are healing and understanding. The lessons of history demonstrate that art offers both.
Gresham Riley ([email protected]) is president emeritus of Colorado College (Colorado Springs, CO), former president of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and a professor of philosophy who is currently engaged in an extended research project on the topic of evil. He lives in Old City, Philadelphia.
To view readers' responses, click here.
The arts and 9/11
GRESHAM RILEY
In the aftermath of 9/11, a New York painter named Elizabeth Murray went public with her anguished thoughts about the ultimate worth of making art after a crisis of such proportions.
“I felt [on 9/11] how futile my artmaking seemed right now,” she wrote in a New York Times op-ed column (Sept. 23, 2001). “How could balancing shapes with line and color have any meaning or be of any use to anyone? …. A good deal of art is going to seem silly and inconsequential now.”
As we observe 9/11’s fifth anniversary, the exercise of taking stock continues, as evidenced by the featured stories in the Inquirer’s Sunday “Arts & Entertainment” section of September 3. Under the heading, “9/11 Five Years Later: Arts in the Aftermath,” the paper’s six principal critics (Carrie Rickey, movies; Carlin Romano, fiction; Edward J. Sozanski, visual arts; David Patrick Stearns, classical music; Jonathan Storm, television; and Dan DeLuca, popular music) assess how well the practitioners of each medium have grappled with the grief, outrage, confusion, shock and fear of that memorable day.
The consensus is: Not very well at all, with rare exceptions in classical music (John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls and Joseph Schwantner’s September Canticles), popular music (Bruce Springsteen’s The Rising); and a volume of photography (Portraits, 9/11, published by the New York Times). The critics offer various reasons for this failure: Insufficient time has passed for artists to assimilate the complexity of the events; undue sensitivity about giving offense; the singularity of the event in contrast to those that last long enough to amount to eras; and, possibly the most ominous of reasons: the inability of static images (paintings, sculpture, photographs) to summarize and explain “the complex political and doctrinal agenda behind the attacks.”
What changed with 9/11?
Yes, taking stock is good for the individual soul and for societal health. Too bad that so little has taken place in the past five years. Much of post-9/11 art is indeed silly and inconsequential, but the events of September 11 had nothing to do with that: It was frivolous and ephemeral all along. I’m willing to accept at face value the negative report card assembled by the critics of the Inquirer. We must not conclude, however, that the making of art is unimportant or that “the balancing of shapes with line and color has no significance in tragic and fearful times.” To the contrary, it is precisely in times of confusion, when we search earnestly for meaning and value, that art can provide the greatest relevance for individuals as well as societies.
Modern secular culture was probably born in 1882 when Friedrich Nietzsche announced in The Gay Science that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” Nietzsche’s point, among other things, was that Western society had destroyed its own belief in God. Humans were the responsible agents because they no longer found adequate the linked notions that truth is grounded in the designs of a Supreme Being, that meaning and value in human life are to be found in those designs, and that both can be realized only in an afterlife.
Although organized religion has hardly disappeared, much of the history of the 20th Century was defined by the quest of modern women and men for clues as to how they should lead their lives in the aftermath of God’s death. And that quest continues.
The search for heaven on Earth
Nietzsche’s answer—one that has found expression throughout the history of humanistic thought— is that human agency is the key for grasping truth, meaning and value. These bedrock virtues are not timeless abstractions that exist independently of what humans think, intend, choose and do. Rather, people’s individual and collective actions are the crucible within which they come to life. Consequently, we needn’t wait until then-and-there to find meaning and value for our lives. Both are possible here-and-now, in this life, because they come to be through our deliberate choices and the actions that follow from those choices.
If indeed it is through human action (complex or simple) that we both create and discover truth, meaning and value, it follows that these virtues find their ideal form in creative acts. This insight brings us back to the arts and their importance.
Art, as the creative and tangible expression of human imagination, is one kind of intentional activity (others include science, philosophy, the writing of history, and statecraft ) that allows us to experience the world and ourselves in novel ways. In the process, art forges distinctive kinds of truth, meaning and value. Far from being futile and barely relevant, art and the making of art (in normal times, but especially in times of crisis) can provide some of the guideposts we seek.
That Iwo Jima photo, for example
So it’s not surprising that art works are sources of consolation and catharsis when we experience hurt, grief or anger, or that they lead us beyond what is safe and comforting to insights and understandings in the midst of confusion. But often, popular art plays these roles rather than fine art. Joe Rosenthal’s photo of the American flag’s being raised on Iwo Jima remains the most powerful image of World War II. Norman Rockwell’s “Four Freedoms” paintings translated President Roosevelt’s abstractions of freedom of speech and religion and freedom from fear and want into narrative stories that Middle America could comprehend, thereby giving ordinary people an understanding of why the war was being fought.
Contrary to what some critics have written since the attacks on The World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, the fine arts can be no less responsive to major crises. Picasso’s Guernica (1937) may have been inspired by the Spanish Civil War, but it’s the greatest war painting of the 20th Century. Maya Ying Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington is unique in the multiple roles it plays in our continuing efforts to come to terms with that seemingly pointless war. From thousands of testimonials it is clear that this simple but powerful piece of public sculpture has offered solace to families and individuals. The Memorial also enables us to understand something of the loss and horror of that conflict in ways no journalist account or history can match.
Doubtless the best artistic responses to 9/11 are yet to come. Is the wait worthwhile? In the meantime, should we be spending time, energy and money on the arts in a period of national crisis? Yes, without question. What we need most during these days are healing and understanding. The lessons of history demonstrate that art offers both.
Gresham Riley ([email protected]) is president emeritus of Colorado College (Colorado Springs, CO), former president of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and a professor of philosophy who is currently engaged in an extended research project on the topic of evil. He lives in Old City, Philadelphia.
To view readers' responses, click here.
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