The artist is not responsible to any one. His social role is

Host: The gallery was almost empty, the last traces of an evening exhibition lingering like the ghost of a song. Spotlights hung overhead, casting long white cones across blank walls where paintings once stood. The faint smell of turpentine still clung to the air. A rainstorm murmured outside, the sound soft but constant, like a distant heartbeat.

In the far corner, Jack stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at an unfinished canvas — a landscape smeared into gray and black, shapes dissolving into confusion. Jeeny sat on the edge of a stool, her coat draped around her shoulders, a cup of cold coffee forgotten beside her.

Jack: “Baselitz said it best — ‘The artist is not responsible to anyone. His social role is asocial. His only responsibility consists in an attitude to the work he does.’”

Jeeny: “That sounds like a convenient excuse for detachment.”

Host: The fluorescent lights flickered slightly, humming as if they shared her disapproval. Jack’s eyes, pale and sharp, followed the wavering light without moving his head.

Jack: “It’s not detachment. It’s integrity. An artist who bends to social demands stops creating — he starts pandering. Art dies the moment it tries to please.”

Jeeny: “But art doesn’t live in a vacuum, Jack. It breathes with the people who see it. If the artist cuts himself off from humanity, what’s left? Noise on a wall?”

Jack: “Truth. That’s what’s left. Unfiltered, unflattering, unapproved truth. Van Gogh didn’t paint for an audience. Kafka didn’t write to inspire hope. They made art because they had to — because something inside them demanded it. That’s what Baselitz meant: the artist owes nothing but honesty to his craft.”

Host: A gust of wind rattled the windows, and the rain pressed harder, streaking the glass with silver threads. Jeeny turned toward the canvas, eyes narrowing on the wild strokes.

Jeeny: “But honesty doesn’t have to mean isolation. Picasso’s Guernica was painted for the people — a scream against war. Ai Weiwei’s installations, Banksy’s murals — all born from responsibility. You call them compromised, but they spoke for millions.”

Jack: “Spoke, yes. But not for approval. The difference is crucial. They didn’t make art to serve; they made it to confront. There’s no morality in the act itself — only in the courage to express.”

Jeeny: “Still, the moment you display art to the world, you enter a dialogue. You affect people. You can’t hide behind the claim of asociality while your work stirs hearts, or provokes anger, or shapes thought. That’s power — and power always carries responsibility.”

Host: Jack walked closer to the canvas, his boots echoing softly against the concrete floor. He touched a streak of black paint, now dry, leaving a faint smudge on his finger.

Jack: “Power, yes. But unintended power. You might as well say a storm is responsible for where lightning falls. The artist’s duty is to create, not to control. Once the work leaves his hands, interpretation belongs to the world. Responsibility ends where expression begins.”

Jeeny: “That’s where we disagree. Expression isn’t neutral. You can’t pour pain into a painting and then deny the splash it makes. Every act of creation ripples outward — it teaches, it wounds, it heals. Pretending otherwise is cowardice dressed as purity.”

Host: A pause. The lights hummed louder, or perhaps it was the growing rain. Jack’s jaw tightened; Jeeny’s hands clasped her knees.

Jack: “Cowardice? You think it’s cowardly to stay true to vision when the world demands moral alignment? Look around, Jeeny — art’s been domesticated. Everything’s a message, a cause, a hashtag. But the moment art becomes propaganda, it loses its soul.”

Jeeny: “And the moment it forgets humanity, it loses its heart.”

Host: The words hung in the air like the final note of a long, sad melody. The rain softened.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. But do you really believe every artist must serve society? Must care what the crowd feels?”

Jeeny: “Not serve. Witness. Reflect. Even protest. But never ignore. An artist who claims to owe nothing becomes dangerous — because detachment breeds arrogance. History’s full of them — geniuses blind to the suffering their silence allowed.”

Jack: “Like who?”

Jeeny: “Ezra Pound, glorifying fascism. Riefenstahl and her ‘Triumph of the Will.’ Brilliant art — ethically bankrupt. Art without responsibility becomes a weapon for whoever wields it.”

Host: Jack’s face stiffened. He looked away, eyes tracing the unfinished painting as if searching for refuge inside its chaos.

Jack: “You can’t condemn art for the artist’s politics. Pound’s words, Riefenstahl’s images — they endure because of their form, their mastery. Their moral failures are personal, not artistic.”

Jeeny: “But that’s exactly the point — art isn’t separate from life. It’s soaked in it. The line between aesthetic and ethical responsibility isn’t clean, Jack. It never was.”

Host: The clock ticked somewhere, slow and deliberate. Time itself seemed to hold its breath.

Jack: “You’re trying to make artists into saints. They’re not. They’re translators of chaos. Society demands clarity, morality — art demands honesty, even when that honesty disgusts.”

Jeeny: “Then why show it? Why share it at all if you owe nothing to anyone? Why not paint in the dark and burn your canvases afterward?”

Jack: “Because the act of sharing is instinct, not obligation. The artist offers the mirror — what others see in it is their burden, not his.”

Host: Jeeny rose slowly, her shadow falling across the canvas. Her voice softened but sharpened at the edges, like a blade wrapped in silk.

Jeeny: “But isn’t offering a mirror itself an act of choice? You decide which truth to show, how to shape it, whom to face with it. That’s not asocial, Jack — that’s profoundly human. You can’t escape that link, even if you deny it.”

Jack: “So what then? Every artist a moralist? Every brushstroke weighed by its social consequence? That’s not creation, that’s censorship — by guilt.”

Jeeny: “Not guilt — awareness. Art without awareness is noise. Art with awareness becomes conscience.”

Host: The rain ceased, leaving only the echo of dripping water. The city lights glowed faintly through the fogged windows, smearing into the room like distant fire. Jack’s shoulders eased, the edge of defiance giving way to reflection.

Jack: “You talk like art should heal the world.”

Jeeny: “No. Just remind it that it’s still alive.”

Host: A fragile silence followed — heavy, but not hostile. The sound of footsteps from the hallway drifted in and faded again.

Jack: “Maybe… maybe Baselitz wasn’t saying the artist should reject the world. Maybe he just meant — the artist must not belong to it. That the moment you let public approval steer your hand, you stop being honest.”

Jeeny: “And maybe he forgot that honesty itself is a social act. We speak truth because someone must hear it. Even silence speaks to someone.”

Host: The lights dimmed automatically — the gallery closing. Their faces glowed faintly in the dying light, two figures caught between creation and conscience.

Jack: “So where does that leave us?”

Jeeny: “Where all artists live — in contradiction. Between solitude and service. Between freedom and responsibility.”

Jack: “Maybe that’s what art really is — the struggle to balance both without losing either.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.” She smiled faintly. “Art is rebellion with a heartbeat.”

Host: Jack nodded slowly, then turned toward the canvas one last time. His finger traced a line in the air, invisible yet deliberate.

Jack: “Then perhaps the artist’s true responsibility is to feel — deeply enough that his work becomes honest, and honestly enough that it becomes human.”

Host: Jeeny stepped closer, standing beside him, her reflection merging with his in the glass frame. Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving the streets slick with silver.

In the final moment, the camera of the world seemed to pull back, capturing them in that quiet half-light — two silhouettes before an unfinished canvas, arguing not about art, but about what it means to live truthfully.

And as the lights clicked off, the gallery sank into darkness — but the painting, though unseen, still existed, still waited — like a conscience whispering into the void:

“Create, not to please — but to awaken.”