A day without artists
Thursday, January 29th, 2009A day without art
I was thinking about the movie “A Day Without a Mexican†that deals with the impact of Mexican immigrants in California and elsewhere. Wouldn’t it be fun to think about a day without an artist (or the products they make and design). Maybe the governor will think about it too.
To be fair, I’m going to leave out clothing (fashion designers), shelter,(designed by architects), furniture,(industrial designers) and cars (automotive designers) all of whom are in fact artists.
So let’s begin our day by driving to the office. Strange that all you can find on the radio is talk shows. As you go to your workplace you notice that the walls are bare but that is not all that unusual. Everything is white, no color anywhere. Working at your computer till 10 a.m. it’s your breaktime. Down at the employee lounge you get a candybar in the machine filled with foodstuffs all in plain brown packages that state the contents: milk chocolate bar, peanuts etc. People seem a little down for a Friday. On the way home, there is still nothing on the radio, your MP3 is blank and all your CD’s are gone.
Finally home and it looks like you’ve been robbed. All your family knick-knacks are gone, your posters, paintings, pottery, All your jewelry gone too. Someone painted all your walls white. No rugs on the floor, no lamps, just bare bulbs from the ceiling. Hey, what’s on tv? Nothing but talk shows, two people sitting at a desk in a blank room telling you what happened and what they think about it. The commercials just show a salesman asking you to buy a product in a white box labeled: Really Fine dish soap. You would like to rent a movie but there are none. Maybe there is a concert in town but…. no. No music at all , anwhere. Of course, no museum or gallery either.
Maybe just read a book. Wait….. no books either… you forgot that literature is an art too. Go dancing? you forgot how and there is no music anyway. No plays either, not even “Our Town†that has almost no set. So there are no actors, musicians, stage designers, ballet or break dancers, no bands or rock groups, no paintings, statues, prints, posters, pottery, jewelry, no decoration of anything, no colored paint to bring out whatever artistic side you have.
Perhaps God will have an answer. Your local church has become nothing but an ordinary building containing chairs facing a single chair in front. No choir, vestments, stained glass windows, carvings, cross, stations of the cross, rolled up Toras, or images of saints or icons. No crucifixes, or statues of Mary. No decorations or symbols can be found.
Well, if I were a better writer, I could go on for a few more pages but you get the idea that the arts are a part of us and all cultures. We cannot stop funding the arts.
– Don Jones