The Triumph Of Art: Our Victory

A message to the artist – the poet, the painter, the essayist, the musician – the artist

The best explanation of why we are supposed to die is because art lives. Art is the immortal component of our affairs which draws realities into a realm of perfectness. Art cannot be repressed; it cannot be oppressed. Art cannot be silenced, because in its silence, it can shout the loudest. Art cannot be arrested; art cannot be censored, because that which is censored has seen the light of the day. Therefore, censoring art is a futile attempt because art flows from the inner conviction of our desire to paint something new in our progress.

Art will stand the test of time. Art will be there even after we are all gone. Art will still stand after all our pillars of resilience have fallen apart, giving in to economic, political and social inequities. Art will be the triumphant giant standing in a desert of intense heat and loneliness. It will be the last song resounding in the retentive memories of posterity. It will not be defeated by the bark of a rabid dog; neither will it bow down to the roar of a hungry lion.

It will be the lonely tree in a forest that has been cleared. It will be the swift river flowing relentlessly in the flaming sun. Art will be the final point of future transitions. It will be there today and in the afterlife. Art will be the final witness of our experiences. It will refuse to be bribed or manipulated; it will not be altered or cancelled. It will be the ultimate carrier of truth to Doomsday.

Kings angry for blood will not benefit from art; they will be rebuked. Art, like that of Frank Chipasula, in Manifesto on Ars Poetica, will spray these tyrannical leaders with terrible verbs of terror. Art will triumph even after its producer is no more. It will be there because it has always been there. Art will sing, art will write, art will paint, art will even be silent.

We need to be always mindful of the fact that we are living in an increasingly resistant and retrogressive society. It is a society where our final redress seems to be found in the courts of law. Yet, this is a society where the instant redress should be emitted from art. Art will not set a day when it has to come out, for it has always been there in our minds. It is already written on our hearts like radiant words curved on a marble.

The artist will always be targeted by those who perceive him to pose some threat. He may be chastised, repressed and even mauled to his death. But his victory is in his art, and that should be the greatest victory of out time: the ability to live beyond your time; the prospect of leaving behind hope for posterity. That is the essence of art. That is why, like sayeth the Holy Bible, our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough; artists, like all good men, must die, but the sting of death will end on the mound beneath which their bodies lie. Art will rise and triumph beyond the pain and miseries of our death.

We must produce art. We must not be in constant awe of those that will need to suppress it, for they will never succeed. Just like one of the greatest artists Alexander Pope said, “so vast is art, so narrow human wit,” we should penetrate into the core ideals of art, and explore it better than we have ever done. So vast will be our art, and so narrow will be the discernment of oppressors. That is where our victory will lie.
We are already in the midst of terrible inequities. As artists we are defending our fold from different fronts. That is where the challenge lies. The triumph of art will be our victory, that is why art should never cease to flow from our loins. Poet and critic Phillip Sidney said that a true knight if fuller of bravery in the middle, than in the beginning of danger. We must therefore rise and write more, paint more, sing more, speak more and act more. The negative picture of our surrounding should be the greatest inspiration. From it, a historic inflow of art can be created. Either, we will have to find a way, or we have to create one.

Like Henry Ward Beecher said, every artist – a painter, a poet, a singer – dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. That is where art wins; that is where art informs us that it never comes from a vacuum. It descends from the experiences of life, the trauma of rejection, the pain of oppression; even the hope for posterity.

The artist shouldn’t be troubled with the predictable perfections of life. He has the artistic license to present the way he wants. Morality should be his guiding principle. It should resurrect the hopefulness that will emanate from our desire to control our progress. Great art will live today, tomorrow, even in the afterlife. That is why the aim of every artist should be to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. I share this concept by William Faulkner.

Let art illuminate the darkest sides of our society. Let it expose the inequities committed in dark rooms planted on mountains and in forests. Its duty to send a searching light into the darkness of men’s hearts should be nurtured. Let the artist’s world remain limitless. It should be from within and without that the artist should explore life. Let him recreate. After all, like Henry Miller once observed, the artist is the opposite of the politically-minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe; he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

As an artist – as a poet; as a writer – you will conceive ideas that the teacher will love or hate; things that the politician will like or loathe; things that the doctor will condemn or recommend; things for which the policeman will want to arrest you or applaud you; things that the lawyer will invalidate or substantiate; things that your father will reject or respect. Don’t despair; you are an artist and give every man his proper dosage even if he will despise it. Its significance will be recognized later in this life journey.

Don’t worry of starting your artistic work because you are not sure if you will be able to finish it. No artist in the world ever finishes his work; we will all take it forward with a terrible speed, but life will force us to abandon it. We should be most interested to rediscover the universe; recreate the society; realign the political situation. Struggle not to complicate art. The farmer should discern it; the driver should uncover it; the politician should interpret it. Simplicity is the greatest adornment of art.

Our hearts should not grow weaker. Indeed we are burdened with the imposed inequities of our friends; those friends whom we cannot ignore; friends who are forcing us to love what we hate for to bring our society back to our roots, we have to show love by producing art that will rebuke them. As artists, we have unimaginable loads on our heads. And, yet, that is what should build our character because it is the nature of the strong heart that, like the palm tree it has to grow upwards when it is most burdened.

Well, this message is drawn from nature, the greatest form of art. Nature abhors a vacuum; nature desires that there should be continuity in it, that it draws together all forms of art. Just like Alexander Pope observed, nature itself is but art methodised. Art should retain its original position in government business. It should not conform to the laid down principles of politicians. It must not be in perfect terror of the loudest voices. Let art be like the soldier’s compass; a pilgrim’s staff. Art should be the basis of everything. Thus, we should produce art in abundance, for art summarises all life’s struggles.

Art has never slept, it only rests. Art will never be deleted, it may only be hidden. Art is the ultimate victory of our time, so should the artist be. Our deepest desire should be to produce more and more art. Let’s write poetry, let’s paint images, let’s sing songs, let’s even think aloud. And at the end, art will triumph. Art will reshape our society. Art will be the ultimate winner. And that will be our victory; the triumph of art.