A quote that came to mind yesterday, from the extraordinary story by Ursula Le Guin:
“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
I think the reason this particular quote came to mind is because it's the Closing of the Visionary Arts Show here in Tucson that I co-curated, and I will be on a Panel with other artists in the show as part of that celebration. I think Le Guin's observation about our culture pre-occupation with evil and suffering (not that I believe in denying such exists and that such should be actively dealt with or healed) but that in the world of "high" art it is almost a taboo (still!) to create or curate artworks that deal with Beauty and Visionary or Spiritual experience. Not long ago I wrote an essay about exactly that which I called "The Dismissal of Beauty in Contemporary Art (and Contemporary Life)", which began as I remembered my years as I pursued my MFA.
Without quoting overly from that article, which I feel says anything I might be saying here in depth, I do think of how important it is, as the show that I curated was, for me, framed by another Le Guin quote, wherein she urges artists and Visionaries to become "Realists of a Larger Reality", as we move into the chaotic, turbulent, and culturally creative future. I'm proud of the show, which featured 20 Tucson artists, and hope it's Visionaries work ripples out to do exactly that.
