Why art is meant to be civilising - not war!

How we respond to art is at times unpredictable.   Works of art are interventions to the spaces they occupy -    public or private -  and they provide  us with opportunities for real encounters where we come face to face with our physical,   intellectual, spiritual and emotional potential and limitations. Encounters with art can create unique personal experiences,  narratives and conflicts within us which are not necessarily related to the artist, even though the trigger  was an encounter with art. 

Western Australian born artist  Gail Hastings uses the term  "intersubjetive“ spaces for those places where encounters with art can happen.   She explains such experiences  as  ‘that which occurs between two subjects' - mostly communications, miscommunications and misunderstandings.   Hastings  likens  an "intersubjective space of visual art" as  a

... field of foibles in which we often find ourselves stranded when faced by another, whether the person across the counter, who tells us we can't be served because we didn't wait in queue (of which, behind us, there is none), or the boss we try to impress who continually forgets our name. Maybe, 'intersubjectivity' is sounding a little too familiar now -  need I go on?  So what has this to do with visual art?

Hastings refers to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacon when she says that what we fear is not what we ‘see of the work of art’ but rather what we uncover about ourselves through the process of experiencing art'. She points out how this guessing leads to fear and distrust that the artist may be fooling or shutting them out. They become ‘scared of losing the upper-hand, of being exposed... '. It is in that moment, when communications break down between art object and the viewer that the "battle lines" are being drawn:  the art object on one hand and the disgruntled and confused viewer on the other.  And exactly at this very moment the act of seeing art  becomes  an opportunity for  'laying down our gaze as one lays down one's weapons' because art is meant to be civilising - not war‘.

Art making and experiencing art are both active ways of  part-taking in our ongoing democratic experiment in my view.  Every time an artist is censored or shut down democracy dies a little! 

So we have to become more mindful how we respond to art. Censorship or aggression is not the answer.

If our democratic ambitions include a vision for a healthier, fairer, more balanced society then conflicting or startling ideas should lead to dialog not aggression. Imagine if this was our shared reality and normal? It would be so much better for our physical and mental health! I for one salute Hastings for saying it aloud: 

'Art is meant to  be civilising - not war!' 

Hastings, G (2007) The intersubjective space of visual art, Art Monthly June 2007 (No. 200). pp. 44-45, National Capital Printing, Canberra.