It could be that the decision to be an artist; that is, a true artist,one who is not interested in monetary gain or honor or anything at all except to express whatever it is that art can express, possibly this is actually in consort with the spirit of Torah. For an artist that chooses to do this because he doesn’t want to accept the burden of subjugation to another type of work that he feels in some essential way would be a sacrifice of his true self and a waste of his life for nought, perhaps this is not a simple rebellion or escape from the commandment to ‘settle the world’, to contribute to the building of human society and settlement, rather, perhaps the artist would be more than willing to contribute in another way to the society were it that he didn’t find the society’s structures, in some way, in contradiction to his soul.
Perhaps the test for the artist is if he also rejects, Heaven forbid, the subjugation to the Torah; the opposite being the case: his proclamation that his soul is more important than all societal convention should lead him to embrace the Torah in it’s entirety with love, in that he has found his soul’s treasure.
featured image:
pencil on paper 29.7 cm. x 42 cm.