Art and ethics

I´m back from a hiatus of more than one year trying to be normal. It didn’t work. But it was a necessary evil, to realize that the normal life that I always tried to have, does not work for me, or for people like me. Also I briefly tried Instagram from a +10 year social media cleanse, it didn’t convince me to go back, so you will never see a social media account with my art or our gallery, so you can call me anti-social… media, fuck yeah!, unless I’m dead. I started to paint again two months ago, from having a one year space were I got distracted with shiny smiling people. I should have trusted my beliefs and not betray my art and myself… at the end I chose myself and who I am. I corrected, lesson learned, never again.

During this time, I learned something valuable related to ethics and our morals as artists, whatever your beliefs are, you must stay truthful to them no matter what, because that makes us who we are and differentiate us from the rest.

It’s curious that until now I’m realizing how strong was in Art School, the feeling of justice and the struggle for a better society as a whole. At least the university that I went to, and those colleges similar to mine, all of them with a strong background in art as a whole, with a variety of artists trying to be musicians, dancers, actors and actresses, painters and photographers. I remember the long talks accompanied with wine or any other drink with our teachers and fellow students, talking about what was wrong with the world and how to fix it. Setting aside the fact that most of us had that youthful energy, I believe that until this day and until the day we die, we will not stop fighting for what we believe, either in our houses, studios, school, or out in the streets.

It was until I started working in several companies and meeting people from other disciplines, that I knew how lucky I was to have been around artists at that age. Growing up during my adult life, I realized how different an artist really is, and how thankful I am to have my mind awoken in my early life. The most valuable thing that I learned in art school was how to have an open mind, to the possibilities of creativity and the commitment of the artist with its discipline. Now, I’m adding one more thing, the subject of this article.

We all still have to face the struggles of the real life, and the daily hassles of a sort of normal life, earn our wages, pay our debts, go to the supermarket, try to fit in. But in the end, deep down we know who we really are.

For the mothers and fathers of art, ethics as an universal principle was the main subject of their paintings, operas and plays, and they were most of the time the only channels to teach people about ethics and morality, how to be civilized humans from a religious point of view. Religious morality was also addressed in art during these times, more after the invention of religions, and as a tool of education and control for civilizations. But when people started to realize that they had freedom of thought, morality was replaced with ethics and we started to have shades of grey, instead of white or black, good and bad.

Morality is a double edge sword due to the subjectivity of its definition and nowadays, the wide variety of people’s beliefs, but ethics is universal and is a fundamental principle that the artist must maintain to respect the craft, the discipline, the truth and it´s responsibility with other humans and itself. Have courage, say no!, scream and kick to let your voice be heard, fight for what you believe.

An artist must be truthful to its own beliefs, honest with its audience and must practice the ethical principles that learns along the way.