What Artists do?

People think of art as something specialists make, like medicine or bridges built by doctors and engineers. Doctors and pharmacists create medicine to cure people. Bridges help us travel to work or go on vacation. With six distinct tasks, artists hold immense societal roles contributing to people’s lives.

Create Special Places.

Architect of Record: Cooper-Lecky Partnership

Landscape Architect: Henry Arnold

Photography: Terry Adams, Mark Segal, Victoria Sambunaris, Wendy Watriss

Images sourced from Maya Lin Studio

The first task of artists is to create places for people. A place for gathering. Perhaps, a place for a ritual of mass. For example, Stonehenge was made as a place to gather for rituals - religious or burial sites. Some say it served as an astronomical observatory. 

Currently, Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a perfect example. The Vietnam War was a controversial one, and Americans questioned the validity of its cause. While many pre-wars and their soldiers were justified and respected, the Vietnam War remains a controversial war in the United States ever participated. Nonetheless, Maya Lin needed to create a space where people could come and honor the lost soldiers despite the complex controversy. 

At the memorial's center, there is a long, V-shaped black wall made of granite. The granite wall has names of the missing, captured, and dead soldiers - approximately 58,000. The structure looks like a sliced-up cake on the memorial ground, where visitors walk down as they read the names of the soldiers. As the visitors continued to walk, the wall started from their feet and surpassed their height — it is a new way of entering today’s modern burials of lost soldiers. Along the way, visitors can read the lost ones’ names with a reflection of their appearance on the granite wall. At the bottom of the structure, the granite wall inscribed with soldiers’ names towers over the visitors. Turning around and slowly ascending back up, the vistors will see the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial, leaving the wall behind. Maya Lin created a memorial place for a ritual of entering the valley of death but seeing hope, healing, and reconciliation in return. Like Stonehenge, Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial brings community/society together. 

Create extraordinary versions of ordinary objects.

Alantobey’s Photograph of a Kente (Getty Image). Link.

A second task of an artist is to create extraordinary versions of ordinary objects. In the West African culture, Kente is a type of textile woven in hundreds of patterns with its name, history, and symbolism. Traditionally, kings have the right to own any newly invented pattern of Kente for their exclusive use, such as ceremonial occasions. Beautifully and costly made they were, the cloth differentiates its wearer from an ordinary human being at that time. 

Recording and Commemorating 

Manohar's Jahangir Receives a Cup from Khusrau (image retrieved from The British Museum). 

A third important task for artists has been to record and commemorate. Artists have created visuals in many mediums to help us remember our present time before slipping into the past. Here is a painting done by an artist from India named Manohar, who was in a royal workshop of the emperor Manohar. The painting shows the emperor’s son, Khusrau (dressed in a yellow robe), offering a golden cup to his father - a moment of reconciliation. In Indian history, the two had an aggressive relationship and had a violent fallout before the time of this painting. This painting by Manhar is to celebrate the reconciliation after the fallout. However, such reconciliation did not last as soon as Khusrau staged a coup that dethroned Manohar. Nonetheless, with this example of the art piece, arts are used to record and commemorate a present time before becoming history. 

Giving Tangible Form to an Unknown

Unkonwn artist' Shiva Nataraja (image retrieved from Rijksmuseum)

A fourth task for artists is to give tangible form to an unknown. Artists create a physical form of things that cannot be seen with the naked eye, or that can only be imagined. In the 10th century, an anonymous Indian sculptor gave the Hindu god Shiva a form in his guise as Nataraja, Lord of the Dance. Encircled by flames, Shiva, the Hindu god, dances to the destruction and rebirth of the world, the end of one cycle of time and its new beginning. The god’s cosmic gesture of his hands while dancing shows symbolic meaning. On the one hand, he holds the flame of destruction— a third-hand points at his raised foot, suggesting a refuge where worshippers may seek. A fourth hand raised with palms towards us, the viewer - a gesture that means not to fear. 

Creating Physical things a feeling(s) and idea(s)

Vicent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night (image retrieved from Wikipedia) 

A fifth function artists must perform is to create physical things a feeling(s) and idea(s). The previous art piece of Shiva Nataraja represents an idea of the cyclical nature of time that is a part of the religious culture of Hinduism. 

The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh is another excellent example of how a creator’s feelings and ideas are put into an artwork. Intrigued by the belief that people journeyed their lives after death to a star, Vincent Van Gogh beautifully painted such a journey into a great art piece. The sky is filled with radiating stars and the moon but has a movement of a wave/whirlpool, suggesting some cosmic energy. Even the landscape has a wavey movement going upward towards the sky filled with the start as if to answer their calling to the sky. Everything has a movement in the painting - suggesting that nature is alive and communicating in its way. 

Seeing the World in New, Refreshed Ways

Ernst Haas' Peeling Paint on Iron Bench (image retrieved from an article “Photography as a Fine Art| Graham Clarke in The Photograph, 1992“ by Rayvenn Shaleigha D’clark)

Artists refresh our vision and help us see the world in new ways. Ernst Haas’s photograph Peeling Paint on Iron Bench, Kyoto, shows us an ordinary scene. To some, it is hard to convince how these everyday objects like leaves and street structures can become art to inspire them. However, on closer look, it has a beauty that people forget to see due to their easy access and how people get used to seeing or feeling this. Rain in the Haas’ photograph enriches the colors of the scenery the artist took a picture of. The star-shaped leaves almost look like they are made of gold. It is nearly a poetic look at a universe people forget they live in. Through the photographer’s eyes, the audience may look at the world more attentively to see our mysterious yet beautiful world. 

Source(s):

Davenport, Gabrielle. 21 Aug. 202AD. What Is Kente Cloth?, https://www.housebeautiful.com/design-inspiration/a33670853/what-is-kente-cloth/. Accessed 22 Dec. 2023. 

D’clark, Rayvenn Shaleigha. “Photography as a Fine Art| Graham Clarke in The Photograph, 1992.” Https://Rayvenndclark2015.Myblog.Arts.Ac.Uk/2015/12/30/Photography-as-a-Fine-Art-Graham-Clarke-in-the-Photograph-1992/, Rayvenn Shaleigha D’clark, 5 Mar. 2021, www.citationmachine.net/grammar-and-plagiarism/?from=videoPreventPlagCM. 

Getlein, Mark. “What Do Artists Do?” Living with Art, 11th ed., McGraw-Hill Education, NY, NY, 2016, pp. 7–12.

Jahangir Receives a Cup from Khusrau, The British Museum, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/W_1920-0917-0-2. Accessed 22 Dec. 2023. 

Maya Lin Studio. “Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982.” Maya Lin Studio, www.mayalinstudio.com/memory-works/vietnam-veterans-memorial. Accessed 22 Dec. 2023. 

Shiva Nataraja, Rijksmuseum, www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/AK-MAK-187. Accessed 22 Dec. 2023. 

Wikipedia. “Vincent Van Gogh - Starry Night.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 July 2022, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Starry_Night#/media/File:Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg.