Calling yourself an artist should mean appreciating creativity beyond your own medium. When artists dismiss other forms of expression, they undermine the very culture of creativity they claim to present.
From painters rejecting photography to critics insisting video games could never be art, creative history is full of artists setting strict boundaries for their art forms instead of expanding them.
Over the years there have been countless examples of artists undermining or bashing other art forms that deserve the same spotlight and platform.
The latest example of this kind of disappreciation that has been circling around on social media came from an interview with Timothée Chalamet. Although many of the circling clips have been taken out of context the principle still stands. How can you go and promote your art form while throwing another under the bus?
Instead of taking the opportunity to speak highly about ballet and opera, some of the oldest art forms, he took it as the perfect chance to label them as art forms that people no longer care about.
However, whether or not people do still care about them is not the main issue in this case. The issue is that when given the opportunity to support a fellow artistic community, the chance is not taken. You can’t claim to celebrate and respect creativity while dismissing all of the forms that continue to keep it alive.
Art has never been meant to compete for legitimacy, but rather it is meant to expand what creativity can be. Supporting art shouldn’t stop at your medium and personally I don’t think it can. In one way or another all forms of art are intertwined in some way. Whether it’s music in dance or set design in theater, art takes on a bigger meaning when it’s combined with other forms.
Whether or not Chalamet meant the comment in a degrading way, the fact is that the comment should never have been made in the first place.
Art is supposed to be the thing that brings people together, not what divides us.
If art is about creativity and freedom of expression, then being an artist should mean paying respect to all the forms the world has to offer.