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Guest Letter from Edwin Lynch4/17/2008 23:14:53In my March 2008 article for The Brooklyn Rail, "Blessed and Holy Confusion," I wrote about Edwin Lynch's play, "Revolt of the Castrati." Since the article has come and gone, Lynch wrote this letter, which I am happy to share on this site. I liked being interviewed by Nathan’s Schneider about the open wound, Washington Square Park. He chose to open his piece with a quote from my play, “Revolt of the Castrati,” which is about two artists, one of whom wants to stop the renovation. I wonder why, so quickly, the voices of opposition to the “new” park have died. Perhaps most artists want to enjoy themselves, to be as free as rock stars. Some of us remember when Kusama painted herself blue and rolled around on canvas. Since then the cutting edge has progressed to self-inflicted wounds, masturbation, and recently, I missed it, a dinner party on Grand Street where naked performance artists climbed ladders and peed in buckets. In an article in the current Atlantic Monthly, Virginia Postrel, in “The Art of Healing,” presents direct evidence that art on the hospital wall affects a patient’s health. Well, clearly we’re not doing well, we Americans. In fact, obviously, America, the romantic name for the US, is doing terribly. Meanwhile, artists have been “free” to be playmates to the marketplace. So, for the unlikely reader, willing to stick to a big question that has fallen out of the limelight, I’m asking this: can we get past self-abuse, mayhem, and abasement? Go beyond color bars, movie stars and chrome bunnies? Celebrate something more than freedom and self-expression? If some art can help patients in hospitals, some particular kind of art, then what about the art that could do something for the country? Why not think about what kind of art that might be? One heck of a conversation. In my play, Toby asks, “I’m a painter. How can I stand by and watch my park be destroyed?” Right now, in my America, this is the exact question that artists should ask themselves. |
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