Foto de Paulo Carocinho de Mãe Coragem por JGM 2011
What are artists for, Mrs. Minister of Culture?
I'm writing to you, Minister, because of the artists and for this world we dream of. Every artist is a whole world within himself. Because there are days when everything hurts and falls apart, the emptiness grows, ceaseless, like a stream of tears that shines in your eyes. Nothing makes sense and yet we continue. It is in the bundle of conflicting desires that the artist divides himself so that his work can transform the world, transfiguring pain into beauty and, sometimes, into goodness. One may or may not believe that inside every man there is a work to be done. For the artist, only the impossible is synonymous with being a creator of worlds. To do what is possible is of the sphere "of what all animals do", as Agostinho da Silva suggests. Nowadays, besides animals, artists and men, computers and algorithms are added to the equation. These too seem to desire the condition of creators. Tolstoy said that "art is not a craft, it's the transmission of feelings that the artist has experienced".
Minister, art is not a mere copy of previously made models. The life of artists is the immaterial base from which everything is born. For there to be artists and works of art there must be a set of conditions that allow them to (over)live in this world. It is up to you, Minister, to manage Culture in this country of valuable heritage. But what about the history of the future that our Father António Vieira talks about? I believe, Minister, that the creator of works of art, must also cultivate a creative power in order to achieve a superior culture. The work on fantasy must prevail over the work of collecting data and memories, of accumulating repeated gestures and habits.
It is likely that not everyone agrees with this definition of an artist. What I defend is that, although mistakes and accidents are an integral part of a creator's path, there is an investment of something unspeakable and unheard of that is deeply human in works of art. And this work on the human that art preserves for itself, no other discipline of knowledge can achieve. By this I do not mean that the use of new technologies cannot transform what we know today and call art. But what is the artist today? What is expected of him in terms of the society that welcomes him and finances him? What is the greater purpose of continuing to make art objects or something close to it? Is there a collective social purpose in this work? Fernando Pessoa understood that "the most important fact in the life of a society is the production of men of genius, of creators." To be a creator is a higher purpose that is part of the design of a people. An artist is like a hook that brings out pieces of nothing or something from the bottom of the soul and body. The uncertain is exchanged for the right and just trying is unshakeable.
These questions are central. Between the people and the artist relationships are established that bring out the defects and weaknesses of our time in the form of artistic objects. Agostinho da Silva says that "the creator is a kind of monster in which there is man and the other; the one who discourages, the one who falls down, the one who cries is man: the other if he is great even the despairs uses. The essential is that man never betrays the artist, that in exchange for the happiness that so many people have, the work that no one else could accomplish is lost". This sublimation of time and context is the fruit of the work of the creator and of the work that exists within - alchemy between the work, body and soul of the artist, in dialogue with his time. Thus, Minister, it is urgent, first of all, to invest everything in the human being. Today, which is already the day of tomorrow, in the future and in the artists, who are the guarantee that something is being done every day to climb our mountain, with mistakes, accidents, mistakes and falls, but certainly towards that "high culture" that we all deserve.
João Garcia Miguel, November 26, 2019
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