Engagement

Art exists for both artists and audiences.

Consider the nature of art created specifically for audience expectations, as contrasted with the idea of art as an individual expression that exists for an aesthetic purpose generally accessible to the culture as a whole. Both are necessary, yet the latter of the two is the most distinctive, forward-thinking, and essential.

And, without such a perspective as motivates the latter artist and audience, there is no cultural progress in the arts, but only repetition of the predictable.

Elevation and Declining

There are things within the power of the artist, and there are things that are not.

Self-reliance, control, and action are within the artist's power.  The failures of cultures and societies are not.  The artist observes, creates, and expresses.  All else in in flux, and it was ever thus.

Art, Being

Force nothing.

Integrity creates its own order.

Across Decades, Over Hours

Linear forms are predictable, against the nature of reality and change.

Expansive forms develop along mental and temporal dynamics, and may be applied to all conditions, all settings, all arts.  These are the critical strategies and tactics that draw out the future into the moment now.

Understand and Choose

There is personal awareness, and there is "mainstream" cultural awareness.

The former is direct, and real; the latter, indirect, forced, abstracted, and a burden. Yet some will embrace the first, while the many will be subject to the second.  It is a mystery.

Equilibrium

Fully realized expression, in final form, is the end result of applied force.

But this is primitive power, originating in expressive impulse, and it continues beyond single, separate works.  It is power that responds to focus and direction, yet refuses control.

Influence

There are truthful expressions, and ignoble narratives as well.

Some say the artist has responsibilities; others will say the opposite.

Ultimately, it is a matter of trust, for both artist and audience.