Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Essays

“Even early in my museum career in the late 1970s , I knew that education was the material of the mind and that art was the flame that set that material ablaze. Without the balance between information (education) and passion (art), there was not the possibility of starting a peace journey.”

Keeping Art Alive Is Challenge to the Artist

EDITOR’S NOTE: Joe Kagle is the director of the Southeast Arkansas Arts and Science Center and as internationally-known artist.  This is the first of a series of articles he has agreed to write for the Pine Bluff News.  They will appear twice monthly on the Entertainment Page.

     Sitting watching the 20-inch more-dots-to-a-line television in Convention color, drinking my light 76 calorie beer and slowing becoming part of the “made for my shape” easy, overstuffed chair, I listened to a wrap-up of the Republican Convention.

     If went something like this: “I have been to the last five conventions and they are all the same.  Maybe we should give it up?  Just think, there are 3,600 TV people, 3,000 newspapers represented and 3,000 other news media personalities.  All this and our television coverage was 27 percent.  That meant that all those other people were watching nothing, or old reruns, or educational TV, or something else, like drinking and dining out until the late news finally came on.  What I propose next time is that we do not do any of this.  The biggest that was accomplished was seeing all my old friends from the other networks.  Certainly the delegates were not needed.  Yes, maybe all we needed was the media to fill the chairs of the delegates and report on our reactions, instead of reporting and re-reporting on second-hand rumors, gossip, and near fact.”

     Deep in that commentator’s heart of hearts there lives the soul of the artist, the man who throws sand into the smooth workings of our so-called ordered society.  I look for that rare creature in everyone.  In the numbers game, bureaucratic world, it is getting harder and harder to find. Oh, let me introduce myself to you, I am 978-26-4826, or 536-3398, or 879-1123, or AO6922101884, or 9240-8341, or 419 688 951 8 1, or … well, you get the idea.

     In the May issue of New York Magazine, 1978, the cover headlines read:  Up AGAINST THE ART ESTABLISHMENT.  Could Leonardo da Vinci Make it in New York Today? (Not???)

     Stories: One time I did not pay my bill on time to the phone company.  I paid the bill two days later and the computer had not recorded it correctly (or something, since my social meeting with computers is limited).  Each month, my name would appear through a window in the envelop, and I would cringe a little as I knew that is was a form letter letting me know again for the final, FINAL NOTICE that I was in arrears of this life and death payment.’

      At last, throwing all caution to a Westinghouse wind, I wrote an impassioned letter, ending with:”Surely, in this great system of the computer, there is one human being who can answer me and right this prolonged situation.  Surely behind all circuits, there someone who I can write and get me an answer.”  I signed the letter, “Passionately yours,,,,” and gave my fates to the great mouth of the post office drop box.  A few weeks later I received an answer.  It was the same form letter as always, but carefully, and lovingly, someone somewhere, had typed in “Darling,” where my name normally went.

     Many years later, teaching in a remote South Pacific Island, I found another rigid numbers-game, bureaucratic system, like finding beer cans in the dessert, patterned after the U.S. Navy “everything-in-triplicate- and if is not in  the book it doesn’t exist” formula.  I had left the Island one summer to teach in Japan, but before going I asked at the business form section of the government office when I had to renew my art business license.  I told them that I would be away on June 1 and could I pay it later.  The pretty, Gleam smile said, “No, you mush pay it on June1.”  This seemed insane so I dismissed it and left the Island for a month.  When I came back, another interchangeable smile met mine when I inquired about renewing my license, but the answer now was, “Oh yes, you can renew your license.  All that you must pay is $13 extra since you did not get it on June1.”

     If I would have been smart, I would have smiled, paid, and left, BUT NO… I attempted to make reason out of the dilemma.

     Each moth I would return, inquire about paying, find out the charges, argue, and attempt to reason, and finally leave, checking in my appointment book to come again at the beginning of the next month.  This went on until Christmas.  By that time, I owed close to three hundred dollars on a five dollar license in overdue fines.

     It was at that time that I was asked to be Santa Claus in the island-wide play for school children.  My picture was on page one of the island newspaper riding in the local parade.  In full suit, with my beard powdered white, black shiny boots, I went back to the window of the Gleaming smiles.

     “Hello I would like to renew my license.”

     “What is your business?”

    “I am in the art business, I am Santa Claus.”

     The first break in the smile happened.  “But you must renew your license in June.  June 1 is the right date.”

    ”I can’t. I am Santa Claus,” showing her my picture in the paper.  “I come but once a year to make all children happy and t spread joy and wonder.”

     “Just a minute, Sir,” the smile returned, “let me have you speak to my supervisor.”

     When he came, his smile faded quickly on seeing the Santa Claus suit. “Just what is this?” he asked.

      I outlined how I had attempted to renew my license, but could only come at Christmas time.

     “What are you trying to pull?” he asked.

     “Nothing,” I said straight-faced, showing him my picture in the newspaper, “I am Santa Claus, and I come but once a year.  This is it,” A long pause followed, “And anyway, I have a multitude of problems besides renewing this license.  Have you ever tried to get through an air conditioner to deliver toys?  You know that there are no chimneys on this island.  I guess that the tropics don’t need chimneys.”  I said, pushing my slim advantage, “and anyway I had union problems with elves all last year.”

     Maybe it was the elves that got him.  “I am sorry sir, but I cannot help you.  You will have to speak with Mr. Carter.  He is the division chief.”

     I was lead into a small office, hidden from sight from the government window, and was greeted by a white-haired man in his fifties.  A second passed as I notice that the smile was not pasted on his face,.  It was genuine.

     ‘Santa Claus, you’ve finally come. I have my list of thing all written out.  Can you help me?”

     “Surely, “I said, taking this hand, “if you will help me renew my business license?”

     “No problems, we will just waive all penalties,” he said with a twinkle, “But you will have to go to Labor management.  I want to see their faces when you tell them about the elf problem.”

     These two stories are like philosophy, painting, poetry, and lave-making: no one wins, but no one loses.  The artists attacks the world in many ways.  Stories, particularly children’s stories, help to shape our world.

     Jack be nimble, Jack be slick. Jack climb the beanstalk, And make money, quick.

     Henry Ford is a modern Jack, stealing the goose that lay the golden egg, the singing harp and all of the giant industry’s bags of gold.  With the seeds of ideas, he climbs the beanstalk of success- defeating the horse with the horseless carriage.

     And after our modern Jack, the Iron Horse will measure America, cutting between the wheat fields, laying steel, along every river, bring the bellowing black beauty of mushroom snake in to the???  And the artist indirectly makes her energy his, wearing her image on his shield and changing the moving world to stone.

      In its best sense, it allows the artist in mankind objectivity and control, unless he looks directly at the process.  If he does, he too becomes stone.  And when this happens, all the world becomes a boring edifice, a structure without meaning or spirit, only form.

     Each man and woman combats the Medusa in his or her own way, but indirectly if the individual is not going to murder the thing he hopes to create.

     Creation is like a dance between mankind and his world.  This is a give and take, an awareness of your partner’s motion and direction.  If not, then everything stops. And after the world stops, the Medusa’s head persist, waiting for the intelligent race of beings.

The arts are alive and well. They join hands with peace and walk to an uncertain future but the artist is the man or woman who can handle uncertainty. The artist is the one who jumps off the cliff of an idea and enjoys the flight, not worrying if he or she lands safely. It is not practical. Sometimes it is foolish and child-like. Sometimes it is worthless in its attempt. But never, when it works and lights the sky over the future, is it done without creativity and the spirit of life. Art is a partner toward peace.”

Arts Evolving in a Revolving Society 

Cultural expression continue to be strong

   Recently I was asked to speak on a panel at Baylor University on the topic “The State of the Arts in an Evolving Society.”  If you were not one of the students in Roxy Hall, here is what I said: “As a director of a museum and a practicing artist, I see the arts as vital, alive, refreshing in imagery, creative, free of fear, evolving, kept on watch through new attacks, kept on line through the artist’s living in a market-place of ideas, kept alive by patrons who care and kept invigorated by viewers who appreciate the new.

     Are the audiences vast at exhibitions, concerts and plays?  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  So what is new about that?  New ideas, new images, new forms of art struggle to be seem, heard and performed for the life of art in our democracy,.

     I attended a deserved standing ovation for Philip Glass “La Belle et la Bete (Beauty and the Beast) at Southern Methodist University recently.

     Waco-born Robert Wilson opened his “Hamlet: A Monologue” to the world in Houston a few months ago to another standing ovation after some walked out in the middle of his show.

     Once individual commented behind me: “He certainly is not Richard Burton” He wasn’t. He was Robert Wilson.

     The Art Center will install a doorway to the future by Wilson this spring, 19 feet high, a sound chamber below, with one line of T.S. Elliot in 100 languages bubbling out of the depths of the earth.  It is funded by the Audre and Bernard Rapoport foundation.

     Rapoport once told me, “If you can’t find the funds to improve our city from any other source, come to me.”  There are modern Medicis.  Will most of Waco rush to see Wilson’s creation?  Probably not. So what?  The arts are still alive and well.

Quality counts

     A member of my staff once said, “We had only five people come to the exhibition today,” I replied, “Yes, Picasso, the pope, the president of the United State, Socrates and Jesus Christ.”  It is not numbers that keep the arts alive and vital; it is the quality of the individuals who passionately support new ideas, new sounds, and new forms of art.

     Government and universities that think number count miss the basic fact of art:  It is a lonely profession.  Numbers come with celebrity status.  Never confuse heroes and creative innovators with celebrities. 

     On the last aspect of “The State of the Arts in an Evolving Society,” I wonder at times whether this society is evolving.  Evolving to me means some kind of linear progress.  Evolving for me means an evolution.  What I see around me today in America is revolution a; a close circle that begins and ends in the same place.

   I know that the general public loves the comfort of revolution-that is, nothing changes but the faces of the practitioners voicing that a change has happened.  What I see happening is society too often is a revolving or devolving society.

Passion in ideas

     But that is great for the artist.  An artist needs friction-not so much that it stops the work, but a little so that ideas have passion as well as new form.

     So we lose grants to Jesse Helms’ mad tirades.  So new ideas do not get funded by the NEA, the government.  Historically, should we have expected the English crown in the American Revolution to fund the uprising?

     The artist will still create art and the public will say, "Now, this is not art.”

   If may not be funded in America.  Artists may have to go to other countries for grants and patronage.  So what has changes?  Leonard moved from town to town, selling his ideas.

     The artist is a well individual today in a sometimes sick society, with just a few sick artists too.  Evolving society?  The optimist artist in me says “yes”.  The museum director in me says” maybe”.

     The creative side of me says, “Who cares? The arts will survive, will prosper, will change how some individuals see.  And those individuals will transform our world.”

     The arts are, have been and will be multicultural.  The art are, have been, and will be evolving.  It is the nature of the process.

     The arts are, have been and will be surviving.  As much as death and life are inevitable, so is art.  Creative thinking and creating works of art are as basic as breathing.

     Society which is collective thought is eventually shaped by the creative thinkers, the artist.  The arts are well and thriving?  Yes, An evolving society? Maybe.”