PART SIXCULTURE, TRADITION, ANCESTRY,
THE IMPORTANCE OF ART. Betty Soarre: Tell me about this tradition you feel you spring from. Do you know your ancestry? Robert Yates: Okay. I hope this is relevant. It seems most traditions and nationalities are now aspiring to come to democracy — in other words, to let their own ancient roots and impulses for freedom, love and peace come to fruition. These are the ancient aching roots that are the same as mine and all humans. They are universal in nature, not limited to petty little subdivisions of people. This is everywhere forgotten, but it is not meant to be remembered. It is meant to be lived. Just as culture is meant to be lived. Culture can't be limited to performing traditional dances and music, or looking at masterpieces in a museum. If it is to be alive we must above all be making our own music and art. Almost all the family history I have is on this side of the Atlantic. I think of it as democratic to the core. I don't know if "democratic" is the right word, but that's the word I will use. There is not a deep understanding of democracy by very many people. The commonly held belief of "democracy" is not democracy. Important words, which are important ideas, need constant clarification. They grow and change like people. Take the word "charity", for example. One of the great Christian saints said that giving out of your excess to the needy is not charity, but justice. Charity is something more. It involves giving of yourself. The word "democracy" is also in need of a clearer understanding. It is not merely the right to vote for every citizen. It is something more. Its heart is a fundamental loving equality, a realization that not only are you equal to everybody else, but, alas, they are equal to you. Their time and lives are just as important as yours, even if you are blessed with more cleverness and talent. Our distribution of wealth makes it obvious how undemocratic we are. Maximum wages should joyfully accompany minimum wages because there is an upper limit one person can earn before he is taking the fruits of someone else's labour. And if we value democracy, there shouldn't be that much difference between minimum wage and maximum wage. In fact, they should be related, a multiple of one defining the other. As the maximum wage grows, so should the minimum wage. From the heart of democracy springs the question, "Why should doctors and lawyers reap more benefits of our collective life together than farmers and garbagemen?" And democracy demands an answer. We base our little social rules on certain assumptions which I think we should question. The huge salaries and mindless adoration given to celebrities -- sports figures, movie stars, people of power -- are simply undemocratic. At one time it was thought that democracy was compatible with slavery. We know this is not so. Then it was thought democracy was true even when it was not extended to women. We know this is wrong. We have yet to learn that democracy requires justice and a saner use and sharing of the Earth. We must continue to grow in our understanding of democracy and it must become second nature to us, a part of us. Democracy, like culture and art, must be lived. It is not out there, it is in here. B.S.: Where do you come from? What is your family history? R.Y.: Of the approximately hundred direct ancestors I know of, or whose names, birth places and dates I have access to, I think probably about eighty of them were born in North America. I am North American. My earliest English ancestors in North America were Puritans who came over and settled near Boston in the 1620's. They had given up on England, refused to recognize the authority of the aristocracy, refused to fly or salute the English flag. They did not come to America to build forts and claim the land for England, but just to live their pilgrim lives as immigrants. I can feel this in my bones; the research I have done tends to confirm it. The Puritans' democratic independence is why the revolutionary Americans of 1776 claimed them as their forefathers instead of the earlier Virginian plantation owners. Nowadays, Puritans are mocked for their upright puritanical ways, but however inappropriate their sense of morality may seem to us, they recognized that strict morality is necessary for true democracy. Everyone has ancestors. We tend to romanticize them I suppose, probably in the hope of making ourselves seem important. Should I digress with this or should we move on to something else? B.S.: I find it fascinating. It may help explain you and what you do. Please carry on. R.Y.: Well, later in the 1600's, when officials of the crown came over to secure Massachusetts for England, they sent back reports of disgust that the settlers who were born as Englishmen now looked and lived much like Indians. They were not wearing black suits and tapered top-hats with buckles, which is the popular image, but long hair and buckskins. The immigrant men outnumbered the immigrant women so many of them intermarried with native Algonquins. The American Revolution was led by men with a very limited sense of democracy. Washington and Jefferson were entrepreneurial slave owners and aspired to positions of power and aristocracy. I'm sure it was the distrust of the nationalism and violence of the new authorities, rather than the love of England, that drove my "Loyalist" ancestors north to Canada. I also have Dutch and German ancestors. The Dutch came over to New Amsterdam in the 1630's. Around the same time my German ancestors came to what later has come to be called Pennsylvania. It was New Sweden at that time. Those branches of the family also came up to Canada. Here they met and intermarried with the folks from Massachusetts and New Hampshire. One of my great-grandfathers came to Ontario or Upper Canada from Quebec or Lower Canada where he was born. He's listed in a pre-Confederation Upper Canada census as French Canadian but his name was Clark, my middle name. His mother was born in Lower Canada. His paternal grandfather had come from Scotland. One of my grandmothers was born in England. So you can see I'm a stew, made from a bit of this and a bit of that. I do not identify with Europe as my spiritual homeland but North America. I can't and won't identify with a race or a nation that would define me as a second-class member because I am not "pure". And I do not feel indebted to any race or nation of people for the privilege of walking the face of the earth. I have many English-derived ancestors but I am not English; I have Algonquin ancestors but I'm not an Indian; I have Dutch and Scottish ancestors but I'm not Dutch or a Scot . . . B.S.: That may explain something about your work. It certainly explains something about you. R.Y.: What some have to learn and others mustn't forget is that the beauty of being Canadian is the lack of nationalism. Unfortunately some people are trying to stir up nationalistic feelings these days by saying that's what Canada lacks. They want us to develop the pride of a distinct people that the Europeans and other nations have. It sure helps mobilizing people for war. Similarly, they say Canada needs to honour heroes and make stars out of their artists and sports figures. People who advocate this type of adulation have a poor grasp on democracy and how it really works. This probably sounds corny, but I like to think my nation is Love and my fellow citizens are men and women of goodwill. A Canadian rapist or murderer or exploiter is no better than a rapist, murderer or exploiter from another country. In fact, he is more dangerous because he lives nearby. Why would anybody be nationalistic when they know that at least one in ten of his fellow male citizens is a criminal who beats his wife, sexually abuses children, or rapes or has raped women. Why should people who don't own their own homes, and maybe don't even have jobs, march proudly off to war to protect the interests of the exploiters and profiteers, the very ones who have disinherited them? B.S.: I see what you mean. Can art flourish in this setting? R.Y.: Whether or not it flourishes, art is a very important activity. B.S.: Why is art an important activity? R.Y.: Something has occurred to me . . . I haven't thought it through so I'll be making this up as I go along. And I have no statistics to back up what I say. Scholars like Herbert Read have linked the drive to make art with the sexual drive. There is something to this. Artists are probably over-sexed people who would be either rapists or Don Juans or nymphomaniacs if they weren't artists. But they have figured out a way to channel their excess sexual energy into creativity. This is a valuable example for society in general. As a society we must also do this and maybe then we'll stop raping our Mother Earth and abusing each other. If we really valued artistic expression, it would above all manifest itself in the environments we build to live in. The city streets and countryside would be worth looking at. And people would be encouraged to love what they are doing, to be creative, to make the results of what they do beautiful. If art was an important aspect of everyone's life, our natural abundance of sexual energy would be redirected to creativity. And I'm sure crimes of sexual frustration would decline and even crimes for financial gain would decrease since people would work primarily for self-fulfillment and to do a good job rather than merely for money. Therefore, I say art should be a top priority for our governments and our life together. If this scenario is true -- and I'm sure that it is -- it is a very strong argument for the support and promotion of art. A safer and more beautifully humane setting to live our lives will come about when vital aesthetic concerns are generally considered more compelling and urgent than mere economic concerns. There must be art in every lamppost and every mailbox. In everything we do. |
PART ONE
Making Art; For Whom & Why PART TWO The Artist, Childhood Influence, Family & Other Artists. PART THREE Education, Relationship to Nature, Artistic Making, Trail Signs. PART FOUR Further Influences & Education, Signatures & Definition Problems. PART FIVE High Art & Folk Art, Snobbery, Colonialism, Roots, Nationalism, Canada. PART SIX Culture, Tradition, Ancestry, The Importance of Art. PART SEVEN The Art World, Hierarchies, Comparisons, Juried Shows & Fashions. PART EIGHT Perception & Conception, Critics, Words & Seeing. PART NINE Art, Beauty, Meaning, Opinions, Judgement. |