Art in an Age of Cruelty
Earlier this week, looking for inspiration, I pulled a favorite book from the shelf — Woody Guthrie Artworks, edited by Steven Brower and Nora Guthrie. It’s a 300-some-odd-page collection of Woody’s drawings, comics and paintings. We don’t typically think of Guthrie as a visual artist, and his work tends toward the folk art, outsider art, cartoonist genres. But it’s philosophically directly in line with his music. Humble, championing the working class of all races, and often angry as hell.
Beginning in 1939, Woody wrote a column called Woody Sez for People’s World newspaper (it was a take on Will Rogers’ Will Says column). The illustrations and comics he drew to accompany the column are sometimes jarring in their relevance to today. One, in Woody’s typical creative spelling, reads “We plege our alegiance to our flag … an to Wall St., for which it stands … one dollar, ungettable…” There are also multiple calls to register to vote.
One comic stood out. It shows a man holding a drink, saying “I’m too sober to foreclose on a widow!”
Earlier that day, I learned about the new app Civvl, which some call “the Uber of evictions.” It offers up to $125 an hour to those willing to help landlords evict people from homes they cannot afford due to COVID job loss.
Woody drew his comic in 1939. This is 2020.
The events of 2020 did not come from nowhere. These are many birds coming home to roost. From pandemic preparedness, systemic racism and the collapsing environment to the simmering rancor of a deeply divided American citizenry exacerbated by social media, tv news, bots and trolls, we are reaping what we have sown as a nation, and as a global population.
In the title, I call this an age of cruelty — not the age of cruelty. One could easily argue that any age… every age… has been one of cruelty. Genocide, slavery, empires, colonization. We have it pretty damn good in comparison to most of the history of human civilization, and it’s important to remember that while we in America fight for social justice and racial equality, many parts of the world still fight for basic human rights and freedom from human trafficking, great poverty, violence and oppression.
We live in the age of insidious little cruelties on social media. The age of big, public cruelties broadcast on the news. The age of legislated cruelties overseen by a smug crypto-fascist wannabe oligarch and his mob of bullies and bigots. The age of feelings over facts. The age of conspiracy theories, easy outrage and half-understood, ready-made ideologies.
We long ago handed ourselves over to our phones and tvs, to advertisers and to algorithms. We’re manipulated in ways we only barely comprehend.
This is an age devoid of nuance, of compassion, of empathy.
We have lost our way as humans. Our casual dismissal of simple human dignity — in others and in ourselves — has paved the way for the kind of “othering” that is a petri dish for fascism, hate and nation-ending chaos. Observing the seemingly limitless unkindnesses and cruelties on display in America, it’s easy to lose hope in our humanity, or at least in any common human bond.
This is the moment to make art.
There is perhaps no more important moment.
Art may feel unimportant this week, but it’s of great importance. Angry art, sad art, compassionate art, calm art, hopeful art. Make it like the future depends on it.
It’s a fact that oppressive regimes prioritize silencing artists — writers, painters, playwrights, singers. Anyone they can’t buy, they shut down. Governments underfund, devalue and dismiss art not because it isn’t important, but because it poses a dangerous challenge. Artists are unpredictable, difficult to control and they love telling inconvenient truths.
Right now, we need inconvenient truths. We need vision and revolutionary empathy. We need lightning rods. We need catalysts.
We need truth — uncorrupted truth. Truth that doesn’t sell advertisements or track web analytics. We need truth that is not tailored to our shopping preferences or browser predilections. We need truth that doesn’t exit through the gift shop.
We need you. We need you to pause, breathe, focus and choose to create.
Express the inexpressable, be it sorrow, rage, hope, love, fury or just hardcore bewilderment. Because someone out there feels the same way and they think they are completely alone.
Make the art.
What you say, what you paint, what you sing, scream, holler or scribble could be the lifeline one single person needs to get through another day.
Authoritarians want you to choose between feeling safe in the bosom of the “right” view, or completely alone. People selling you crap think exactly the same way. I worked for a CEO who said when pitching for a project we needed to “sow fear” in the client’s mind that choosing a competitor would be a drastic mistake.
Don’t let anger, fatigue or fear stop you in your tracks. Make the art.
But how do we get our message out there? What about the Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, Facebook and the algorithms?
Fuck the algorithms.
Make the art. Make it and brandish it like a flag. Do it the old-fashioned way and just put it out there and tell people about it. Build alliances, cooperatives, international Zoom art mobs.
Art can be a sanctuary for the creator and the beholder. It can be a respite and source of rejuvenation for the world weary.
If you make something today, and it changes one single heart tomorrow — swings someone’s compass needle from intolerance to acceptance, anger to compassion, shouting to listening… well, that’s one kinder heart than before.
One person, one heart at a time, the world becomes less cruel.
