The Source of Self-Regard - Toni Morrison Page 0,22

this one. We live in a world where justice equals vengeance. Where private profit drives public policy, where the body of civil liberties, won cell by cell, bone by bone, by the brave and the dead, withers in the searing heat of all war all the time, and where respect for and even passionate interest in great art can dwindle, can shrink to a price list. It is possible to wonder if we have progressed psychologically, intellectually, emotionally no further than 1492, when Spain cleaned itself of Jews, to 2004, when Sudan blocks food and medicine and remains content to watch the slow starvation of its people. No further than 1572, when France saw ten thousand slaughtered on Saint Bartholomew’s Day, to 2001, when thousands were blown into filament in New York City. No further than 1692, when Salem burned its own daughters and wives and mothers, to 2007, when whole cities are chock-full of sex tourists feeding off the bodies of young boys and girls. It is possible to wonder whether, in spite of technical and scientific progress, we have turned to sorcery: summoning up a brew of aliens, enemies, demons, “causes” that deflects and soothes anxieties about gates through which barbarians stroll; about language falling into the mouths of others; about authority shifting into the hands of strangers. Civilization in paralyzing violence, then grinding to a halt. Don’t misunderstand me. There is real danger in the world. And that is precisely why a correction is in order—new curricula containing some meaningful visionary thinking about the life of the moral mind and a free and flourishing spirit can operate in a context increasingly dangerous to its health. But if scientific language is about longer individual life in exchange for an ethical one; if political agenda is the xenophobic protection of a few of our families against the catastrophic others; if secular language bridles in fear of the sacred; if the future of knowledge is not wisdom but “upgrade,” where might we look for humanity’s own future? Isn’t it reasonable to assume that projecting earthly human life into the future may not be the disaster movie we are constantly invited to enjoy, but a reconfiguration of what we are here for? To lessen suffering, to know the truth and tell it, to raise the bar of humane expectation. Perhaps we should stand one remove from timeliness and join the artist who encourages reflection, stokes the imagination, mindful of the long haul and putting her/his own life on the line (in Haiti or North Africa) to do the work of a world worthy of life.

This in short has been the mission of ArtTable.

One of my students gave me a painting—a collage, sort of, printed, cut, and pasted. Within it were these lines:

No one told me it was like this.

It’s only matter shot through with pure imagination.

[So] rise up little souls—join the doomed army toward the meaning of change.

Fight…fight…wage the unwinnable.

The Individual Artist

IT OUGHT to be relatively easy to describe the plight of the individual artist, the importance of such a resource to the country, and to describe the nature of the commitment made to that component in the goals of the National Endowment for the Arts. But it really isn’t all that easy because the phrase itself—“individual artist”—provokes all sorts of romantic images, pictures and notions of a beleaguered, solitary individual struggling against Philistines, willy-nilly, who somehow breaks through the walls of ignorance and prejudice to acclaim acceptance perhaps, by a critical few in his or her lifetime—and/or posthumous fame, if not eminence, at a time when it does the artist no good. And that picture is one we love to fondle, but it is a kind of Procrustean bed, an intellectual trap, because it’s such an attractive portrait that it encourages what ought to be eliminated. We seem somehow to cut off the limbs of the individual artist to fit our short bed, and we ascribe to him or her penury and sacrifice and the notion of posthumous award. We love so much the idea of the struggling artist that we enfranchise not the artist, but the struggle. In fact, we insist on it. Our notions of quality sometimes require it. It is true, and I think we all agree, that quality equals/means/suggests that which is rare and difficult to achieve. But sometimes, the word “rare” translates into “appreciated only by the very few,” and sometimes the phrase “difficult to achieve” means “had to suffer in order to