Just a spoon full of sugar...

Can one really give a rational definition to contemporary art without raising hackles? If you are obsessed with labelling and compartmentalising, this definition, in fact, most definitions, will drive you spare, for today, in the here and now, so many different art forms are being described as contemporary that the umbrella label has been closed and Contemporary with a capital C has come to mean avant-garde and little else; a misnomer that excludes a huge chunk of today's artistic output. Contemporary with a small c encompasses everything else.

I am not a labeller myself. I dislike them. I would like to view art as one continual progression dating back to the caves of Lascaux and our own spirals in Tarxien. There is, in fact, no art form that is outmoded, as artistic expression has remained the same whether it was born in Etruscan Rome, Ancient Rome, Renaissance Rome, Baroque Rome, Liberty Rome, Fascist Rome or Cinecittà Rome! All art forms are manifestations of the divine muse granting variable abilities to gifted individuals to express themselves whether through music, painting, sculpture, poetry, film, dance, prose or architecture. There can be no contemporary without the past for today's contemporary will, in the twinkling of an eye, be tomorrow's history.

There was a frisson of shock horror last week when I commented about the Eurostat survey, which placed Malta at the bottom of the list in as far as art and culture is concerned. On one hand we had many of the intelligentsia throwing up their hands in horror and we also had students and members of the public call a subject like Systems of Knowledge boring and counterproductive. I detected an ennui that was painful; a disillusion with the system that was verging on the tragic.

I would like to make it very clear that artistic priesthood should be discouraged, by which I mean that each branch of art has its own little priestly band jealously withholding its knowledge, rites and rituals from the rest of us. Art must not be restricted to the cognoscenti. Many of you may have read my concert reviews in which I try to exclude any sort of useless jargon. I try to write as intelligibly as possible so that the ordinary mortal like myself who attends an orchestral concert for the sheer pleasure of doing so is not, when reading my review, faced with a bewildering plethora of technicalia; tessitura, fifths, sevenths, and all that jazz that renders music something that can only be fully appreciated by the initiated alone. I abhor that attitude. It is counterproductive.

I have been told so many times by people who stop me in the street that, although they love music or painting, they do not understand it, thereby implying that they are disadvantaged. Art is an expression of love. As Dante said, l'arte all Iddio nipote, which means that if man is God's child, art is God's grandchild. It is artistic expression that raises us above the apes and gorillas that Darwin proved to be our ancestors. Therefore, whether or not God has anything to do with it, art lifts us far and away above the rest of creation and gives man a semi divine status. What has been produced over the millennia by those special individuals who create, is for the benefit of the rest of mankind. Art needs an audience and that is us.

Therefore, as I see it, teachers and cognoscenti will never be able to achieve much by way of general education unless they get off their pedestals and seriously work at making the art of learning fun. I know several educators who have made this their life's work and it is to them and people like them to whom I owe my own love of art and culture which, yes, embraces both Bach and Eminem, both Bernini and Duchamp, both Donatello and Bourgeois, both Euripides and Pinter, both Callas and Shakyra, both Raphael and Hirst. The list is endless but it is only through knowledgeable appreciation of the past and present that the future can be defined. These diametrically opposing viewpoints must be reconciled. Art is there for everyone to enjoy. This should be the fundamental attitude of any dedicated and serious educator who carries the huge responsibility of turning out exceptional men and women in future. There is nothing I enjoy more than taking on young people half my age in an intellectual scrap simply because I find what they have to say so stimulating, interesting and new. I can sense that they need to know more and that, through no fault of their own, huge lacunae still cloud their judgement. This is the fault of our educational system that force-feeds facts down these young impressionable throats without discussion or evaluation... and without any joy either.

All educators must take a leaf out of Mary Poppins's book, "just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down... in the most delightful way". Yes, learning, especially referring to art and culture, is our medicine. Each drop of knowledge that we acquire is our health tonic that enriches our mental constitution and enables us to think better and to rationalise better. Knowledge is power. If art and culture is packaged well, if it is marketed properly, then we will be backing a winning horse that did and will still drink when taken to water.

kzt@onvol.net