Bleg: The Social Responsibility of Artists

Lately I've been having vague thoughts about an artist's responsibility to the culture from which they draw their 'memes.' These vague thoughts have arisen specifically in the context of current thinking about how copyright has gotten out of control and should be trimmed back, if not entirely abolished. This post is a vague and rambling toss in that general direction. It’s thinking outloud.

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So, if one is going to make an ethical case for releasing piles of materials from bondage to copyright, as people are doing these days, one needs to think about one’s obligations to make ethical use of that material. Perhaps the issue will take care of itself, whatever the issue is. But, if we drop the notion of the artist as protean creator, then it’s NOT simply an issue for the artist. And it’s not at all clear to me that we can simply say that the artist’s use will be ‘taken care of’ in post facto reception of their work.

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As far as I can tell, the culturally dominant idea of the artist is still the romantic one of the protean creative genius. Such geniuses are obligated ONLY to their protean creativity, to which they must be true. As that two-faced SOB Polonius says in Hamlet: "To thine own self be true." The genius gets nothing from his culture and owes nothing to it.

What happens when you drop the notion of the creative genius while at the same time acknowledging the artist's dependence on existing cultural practices?

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There is, of course, a great deal of thinking about the relationship between the art and the state, about censorship, and about art and politics. And there is a general argument that overt political agendas are inimical to art. This seems both relevant, but not quite to the point.

I guess what I’m wondering is there anything specific to the issue of ‘cultural capital’ and copyright. I suppose that, in a way, the answer is: likely not. For the problem is quite recent one. Copyright dates to the early 18th century, though perhaps earlier depending on how you reckon it. And it’s only recently that it’s become a significant problem.

And it’s become a problem in a world where the relationship between public and private, individual and collective, is radically different from the world in which copyright law was established. As I understand it copyright was established at the behest of and on behalf of commercial concerns, printers and publishers, not writers and artists. It’s only later that it came to be rationalized as protection for the rights of writers and artists.

Meanwhile, private corporations have flourished and come to occupy a dominant role in society. And they’re the legal entities that effectively hold most copyrights and they’re the entities who want to extend copyright. So, I suppose what I’m wondering is that, if one wishes to deprive these corporations of what is now, for better or worse, their property, if one isn’t at the same time have to reconceptualize the nature of artistic production and the responsibilities of the artist.

That is, we can’t just go back to the world that existed before copyright. That world doesn’t exist any more. The notion of the artist as protean genius either didn’t exist in that world, or just barely existed. Though that idea still persists, it’s being called into question.

Just where ARE we going?