As a columnist at the microphone of Rebecca Makonnen, on the show We’ll say what we want, Jérémie McEwen has repeatedly been led to reflect on the link that exists between the artist and his work, and on the moral questions that are implicit in it. The more he talked about it, the more obvious it became to him that the debate was stalling.
“I have the impression that by wondering only if it is still moral to look at the work of Woody Allen, for example, we limit ourselves in our reflection. To better understand the influence of one on the other, it is necessary to turn the question around, to sew it up again, to analyze it from all sides. I want us to think about this link in nuance. »
To do this, the essayist and columnist has thought about angles that would admit that the artist-work link is certainly inevitable – hammered by the media coverage of art, stardom and social networks – but also very limited. In the preamble of The artist and his work — the collective essay that results from his approach — he writes: “I want artistic facts and particular cases, and particular and partial readings, and I think of it as an elastic band that stretches and relaxes, sometimes distancing the artist from his production, sometimes bringing him closer, but knowing that a broken rubber band is no longer of much use. An artist without a work is empty, a work without an artist is blind”.
Eight employees, eight visions
Jérémie McEwen called on personalities whose approach and thought he admired, and directed them towards a reflection representative of their work, their experience or their image. It was to Rebecca Makonnen that he entrusted the task of writing on the classic question: should we separate the artist with inappropriate behavior from his art? “By agreeing to celebrate a work, am I an accomplice? Am I minimizing gestures? Probably not, but I no longer feel pleasure, wonder, admiration, ”she raises.
Safia Nolin, for her part, opens up about the media place that her person occupies with regard to her music, and the need for validation and an outside perspective that her work implies. ” […] the release of my second album was much more complicated than expected. I think it was one of the times when I first felt [qu’il] there was a split between the media attention I had and the interest there was in my music. Safia, we love you so much with your oily hair, but we cuddle a lot of your art, ”writes the singer-songwriter.
To Caroline Monnet, he asked how much her Anishinaabe origins influenced — and restricted — her work. “We have reached a level where the next generation can […] access broadcasting platforms, without necessarily being in the process of reconstruction. More and more, I am invited to collaborate on projects where my Aboriginal identity is not taken into account. I find it refreshing because I feel respected for my work. »
For his part, Alexandre Goyette retraces the life of a work and its author through the multiple adaptations of the play. King Dave. In a surrealist dialogue between an artist and his unborn work, Marie-Ève Trudel reflects on creation and what will never see the light of day in a post-pandemic context.
Finally, in literature, authors Gabriel Cholette, Eftihia Mihelakis and Laurie Bédard offer essays on autofiction, the influence of feminism in academia and the impact of the #MeToo hashtag on the literary world.
The result, eclectic and joyfully incoherent, offers no clear answers or revolutionary ideas, but is filled with golden nuggets, so many touching moments, doubts voiced out loud, self-realizations and passages clear-sighted and nuanced which are interpreted as the portrait or the mirror of an era.
A dialogue with the work
The many directions taken by the texts never diminish Jérémie McEwen’s wish to refocus the debate on the works, whose lifespan exceeds that of their author, and which are, in reality, all that we have left for apprehend history, society, their evolution, their shortcomings as well as their exploits.
This philosophy, the essayist would very much like to see it applied more in the medium of the Quebec media. “The media plays an important role in showcasing art. It’s convenient to emphasize a personality when it generates clicks and ratings. But the community is starting to get caught up in its own game. In a case like that of Philippe Bond, accused by eight women of sexual misconduct, rather than simply stating the facts, we spin on the subject and we are told every step of his day. If we want to understand the toxicity of the medium of humor, we should turn to art. Jean-Philippe Baril Guérard’s novel, for example: the obsession with personality gets us nowhere. »
Jérémie McEwen therefore advocates an in-depth reform of the work of cultural journalists. Exit the long interviews, the random chat where we extrapolate on private life, the artistic approach and “the bean salad recipe of its creator”. Gone too are the reviews that only think in terms of stars and a half.
“Basically, what I want to do is establish a real dialogue with the arts. That’s why I invited artists, to let them create, play with the theme, reinvent it creatively. We want at all costs to quickly achieve objectivity when we talk about cancel culture. But the answer is, like art, subject to interpretation, and it is through the works, the work of artists that we can find it. »