Art and the Culture on Interruption
November 7th, 2009 by jtony
I’m getting in on the tail end of this meme, I know, but I think there’s a point here, so bear with me.
I’m not a big fan of Kanye West. I don’t dislike him or anything, it is just that, except for his occasional outbursts, he doesn’t really hit my radar. I’m told he’s a talented musician, and I believe that, but I really haven’t partaken in much of his work, so I don’t know first hand.
The same can be said for Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. I can’t think of a single song I know by Swift, and Beyoncé I only really know through Glee and Coverville (If I ever figure out how to surgically removed that song from my brain there will be scars).
But I was fascinated by the MTV Video Music Awards and Kanye West’s interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to extole the virtues of Beyoncé’s video and the subsequent memes it has produced. The audacity it would take to interrupt someone’s speech not to say that you deserved it (like he did at the European VMA Awards in 2007), but that someone else deserved it more… that’s just amazing.
What I’m finding particularly interesting is how shocking it all is. How surprising it is to see someone get up and break the planned framework and interject something else, however self serving and asinine. It surprises me that the American public finds this so novel.We live in a culture of all kinds of constant interruptions. From commercial television to pop-up ads on the internet, the culture of interruption is pervasive in our lives. From stop lights to panhandlers to our telephones, our lives are filled with things that break up our intended patterns. So why is it so surprising when Kanye West does it?Well, for one thing, the sheer rudeness of the way he interrupts and the inappropriateness of the comment at that particular time, but I think also that a single person not only can get up and take the entire scene hostage, but that he thinks he can and basically gets away with it. I think that’s the main thing we react to. That’s what we don’t like.But, I think that, as artists, we all need to be a little bit more like Kayne West, or at least our pieces do.
I’m not saying we should go around being rude to fellow artists, interrupting them when it is their moment to shine. I think the opposite, that we need to behave with the greatest reverence to our fellow artists… even the ones we don’t really like. Especially the ones we don’t really like.
But every piece of art needs to be thought of as just the same, jarring interruption to daily life that Kayne West was to Taylor Swift. A painting on a wall needs to interrupt that wall and stop you in your tracks to present you with an augmentation to your reality that you’ll carry away with you. “I see you’re enjoying that wall paper. I’m happy for you and Imma let you finish, but Elvis was the greatest gunslinger OF ALL TIME!”
Sculptures should shake your attention away from the surroundings and freeze your thoughts into a focused contemplation of form. “I see you’re looking at the columns and tiles in this courtyard, and Imma let you finish, but The Thinker had the best Thoughtful Pose OF ALL TIME!”
Ok, so maybe the analogy is not perfect, but the idea is that every piece of art should arrest you, stop you rocking in your sneaks and break, even just for a moment, the pattern of your day. If we start with that aim and cling to it throught the creation process until the finished piece not only arrests other viewers, but us, the creators, well, I think we might have something worth contemplating as art.
Art interrupts our lives, our patterns in ways we must be grateful for, because it makes us look at everything else just a little differently afterward. We don’t have to be like Kanye West, but our art should be just as outrageously brave and audacious and hubris in interrupting the daily patterns of life.