Mr. Clayton W. Lord

On Value: What Does Art Have to Do with America? by Robert E. Gard

Posted by Mr. Clayton W. Lord, Jul 15, 2016 0 comments


Mr. Clayton W. Lord

This excerpt is from the newly released book "To Change the Face & Heart of America: Selected Writings on the Arts and Communities, 1949-1992" by Robert E. Gard. 

MEDITATION 1: What Does Art Have to Do With America?
by Robert E. Gard

"And our dream must now be this: of so implanting the seed of a thrilling art movement that this seed will grow from ourselves. The dream must be one that will begin in the narrowness of American doorways and that will become as wide as an internationalized and peaceful and tolerant world." —Robert E. Gard. Drawing by Daniel Ackerman.

If I could wish for one thing in this life it would be that I might live long enough to hear the music of the American spirit emerging from thousands of fine civic orchestras in large places and small; see good plays, joyously presented and viewed in every American community almost every night; see fine pictures by native American artists decorating the walls of a multitude of American homes of every economic status. Well, we move rapidly in America. We do get things done. We can become a nation of great interior strength through the arts if we have a mind to do it.1

★★★

Theater must grow spontaneously from the lives and the necessities of the people so that the great dream of a few men and women who saw true visions might come true: the dream of an America accepting the idea of great popular art expression without question as a thing inherently American. What you have, America, is the frontier in its many complex and varied manifestations. What you have now is the result of a struggle that has somehow not fixed itself into great plays. Your struggle, America, has matured so rapidly that the quaint folkishness of your village has been swept into an almost common molding, and the economic fruit of your struggle has been so plentiful that we, your people, have tended to shun the responsibility of art, sometimes to scorn it, and to look at it askance as a manifestation unworthy of our virile American manhood. You have put down deep taproots, America, that have given us the stuff of wondrous plenty, but these same roots have starved off the expressiveness of yourself. For those of us who have loved you best have not completely understood your struggle, and the art that is in you has only faintly touched the lives of your people.

Yet you have the greatest promise, America, for a sweeping art understanding in your folk. There is the mightiest promise of it, America, in this: that as we, your people, have made the chief end of your frontier struggle the attainment of a huge, industrialized society, so may we be capable, and in a short while, of becoming an art-conscious people. And our dream must now be this: of so implanting the seed of a thrilling art movement that this seed will grow from ourselves. The dream must be one that will begin in the narrowness of American doorways and that will become as wide as an internationalized and peaceful and tolerant world.

It became suddenly and completely apparent to me that we could no longer pretend that theater, to have its true vital meaning, could be fabricated and foisted upon the people as entertainment alone, or as sociology, or as an art form practiced by the few for the satisfaction of individual egos. But that theater must grow spontaneously from the lives and the necessities of the people, so that the great dream of a few men and women who saw true visions might come true: the dream of an America accepting the idea of great popular art expression without question, as a thing inherently American.2

★★★

America has achieved great material abundance by means of its unique democratic institutions. It has now the challenge of providing that material abundance is only the beginning of man’s societal evolution. The goal has always been the ideal community. Utopian philosophers have speculated for centuries about what kind of society would be possible once man was free from toil to exercise his mind and spirit. Most of them conceived that those processes and products known as the arts would be an important part of any ideal society or community. The challenge is to define the ways in which the arts can serve all of the people. To do this it is foolish to cling to notions about the arts that define them in terms of long outmoded aristocratic social models, or in outmoded philosophical frameworks.

What will happen when small communities create arts councils that will cooperate with their own local school systems and local government to encourage young and old to participate in the arts either actively or as a spectator? What will happen when state arts councils, in cooperation with the great university systems, organize liaison and coordination between community arts councils, university arts groups, and other arts institutions and arrange exchanges of arts attractions and resources?

All of these things are possible and can be done now if we begin to assess the great opportunities that have opened up to us as a result of the arts being developed in an educational framework with creativity and democracy seen as both processes and ideal goals.3

★★★

In the creative arts, especially, new work needed to be undertaken to relate the arts to people’s lives. That the people themselves desired such a relation seemed to me to be indicated by the interest in local scene and tradition I had found in America. From such desire, I believed, a good popular art could grow.4

 

"To Change the Face & Heart of America: Selected Writings on the Arts and Communities, 1949-1992" is a series of meditations on core questions at the intersection of the arts and community life, all drawn from Gard's 43 years of writing. This book is part of the New Community Visions Initiative, a two-year national visioning exercise for local arts agencies, arts organizations, artists, and those interested in better understanding the future role of arts and culture in helping American communities thrive. It was edited by Maryo Gard Ewell and Clayton Lord, with illustrations (such as the one above) by Daniel Ackerman.

To read more of Gard's essays, purchase "To Change the Face & Heart of America" in the Americans for the Arts bookstore.

 

 

1Gard, Robert E., “A Soil for Theatre,” in Stevens, David H., Editor, Ten Talents in the American Theatre, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1957.
2Gard, Robert E., “A Search: Story of the Wisconsin Idea Theatre,” in Wisconsin Idea Theatre Quarterly, Winter, 1952. Maryo Gard Ewell library.
3Kohlhoff, Ralph, “The Arts in a Democratic Framework.” In Gard, Robert E., Ralph Kohlhoff, Michael Warlum, Editors, The Arts in the Small Community, Supplementary Booklet Vol. 2, Madison, Office of Community Arts Development, 1969. 33-58.
4Gard, Robert E., Grassroots Theater: A Search for Regional Arts in America, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1955. (Reprinted 1999.)

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