Curatorialist

These are the words to the famous Apple ad, featuring the likes of Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Picasso and many other famous rule-breakers:

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”

I’m reminded of it while I’m reading today’s story of Shepard Fairey getting arrested for tagging. Certainly, he’s a bit of a misfit. Definitely not fond of rules. But it got me thinking. How do we distinguish between “good” rule-breaking and “bad?” At what point is trouble-making just trouble-making. Remember during the election when Jill Greenberg shot John McCain for the cover of The Atlantic and then manipulated some outtakes to create some much less flattering shots of him for her own anti-McCain campaign? She was called a “disgrace to her profession” by the very magazine that hired her. Certainly she’s a round peg in a square hole. Is what she did good or bad? What about Fairey? Lofty questions.

The notion of breaking the rules is on the top of the world’s minds right now as Iran deals with its own issues of what status quo is. It’s hard to know who to glorify and who to vilify in that scenario. Certainly, the guys with guns, shooting women in the streets are to be vilified, but beyond that, who are the rebels here? It is easy to say, “we want a fair election” and to stand for that. But is it a fair election? The Ayatollah appointed both of the candidates, anyway, so it’s a freedom within a non-freedom that we’re rooting for. And both candidates would like to see Israel wiped off the map and both support terrorists, so it’s not just a freedom within a non-freedom, it’s a freedom to HAVE a non-freedom. If lives of innocents is where we draw the line, perhaps an honest election is the least of our worries. But we think in terms of Western realities, where an ideology of equality is already in place.

But what of art? Art gets a bit of a pass because rarely does an artist need to endanger someone’s life in order to make art. Should art even be mentioned in the same breath as the situation in Iran? Well, I didn’t put Ghandi next to Jim Henson in the Apple ad, so don’t vilify me. I think the important thing is to ask the right questions. What are we fighting for? Why this rebellion? To what end? Are you changing the world or just being a narcissist, or a murderer, or a felon? In both art and war, the questions are necessary. Art, when it is doing its job well, is asking those questions, of people, of the world, of itself. There is importance in that.