KILROY WAS HERE

Creative people and onlookers, both, have this conversation: why make art?

My theory? It is the Kilroy impulse. Leave a mark when you go.

Think of that painted hand print on the cave wall. Or incised patterns on a workaday clay utensil; epic poems, and written stories; musical notation; dances of celebration and sorrow; sculpted figures. Each is a small shout of “I was here, I made this, I will die, this will last.” Identity and mortality. An outpouring of self and of connectedness.

Artists attempt to arrest life itself, so that even after many years, when a stranger looks at it, they recognize life, and are moved.

We all have different experiences and perceptions, and so we have different tastes and skills. So bless the teachers and curators who devote their lives to helping us appreciate art, especially the art that doesn’t speak to us personally. Bless the collectors, who amass art that speaks to them, for the sheer joy of it; and the donors, who find their joy in funding hallowed halls where their names are writ large and the rest of us can find ourselves.

Are there more important ways to spend one’s time? Money? Life? Energy? Poverty and war and injustice abound, why make art?

Maybe because great art encapsulates the essence of being human: it promises a kind of truth about what it is to be human. Because since the first recognizably human creature painted animals on a rock, we humans have spoken to each other through art, a universal speech that transcends time and culture and language and geography. Maybe because art can open minds and change hearts.

When all is said and done, what is essential remains. Perhaps the last human on the planet will draw a self-portrait: I was here. I mattered. Are you out there? Do you recognize something of me in yourself?

That seems pretty important.

Cave of the Hands, Argentina (paleolithic red ochre)