Art Promotion In The Speech Of Joyce DiDonato, An American Opera Singer
In the Julliard School’s 109th Commencement Speech, Joyce DiDonato, an American Mezzo Soprano Opera singer, introduces the fresh graduates and the audience to the values and truths of the life of the artists. The author illustrates four observations to encourage the graduates and welcome them to the wonderful journey ahead. Although her observations are very clear, honest and motivating, some of them are also found very arguable and generalized.
Joyce begins his speech by first congratulating and honoring the hard work and the talent of the young artists’, and moves on to explain his journey and the hardships along with it, in order to arisen their curiosity of “challenges of the artistic life ahead”. The main observations that the author mentions are that as artists, they will never perfect their work and that the seek of accomplishment will never come to an end, as there is no specific goal, and henceforth, comes with it the need of working tirelessly and non-stop. The author, moreover, illustrates that the main function of art is to serve the world rather than to be it a self-expression, and calls this to be the honor of their work. She then completes her observations by stressing on the importance of the beauty, creativity and the truth of their art to the surrounding world.
The author’s observation regarding that as artists, they will never fully accomplish a thing is well constructedtified. She stressed on creativity and the “childlike sense of wonder to your craft” to be the essence of art. Hence the author concludes that there will always exist a particular aspect of the work which the artist will seek to continuously improve but never reach a perfect state, this is mainly because the creativity of the artists will never reach to an end, but it will only be stretched. From this observation, he also supported the claim that the work will never stop, because as there will never be a point in art where everything is done. Thus, these two observations have been well elaborated and hardly arguable.
On the other hand, the author’s claim that artists do their work as a mean to serve humanity seems rather arguable. Since art has come to be a way of expressing one’s inner thoughts, feelings and ideas; henceforth a magical tool for self-expression. In his article of “Promoting Self-Expression Through Art therapy”, Stephenson makes the following claim: “The art making process is creative, with the potential to evoke a multitude of emotions and memories”. Thus the main function of art is to reflect one’s ideas and creativity rather than a mere tool to satisfy others’ tendencies. The author also failed to take into consideration that there are plenty of artist who have marked their names eternally into the hall of fame through their art. Hence individual glory and awards can also be found in art and would be every artists’ dream to achieve it.
Through her speech, Joyce stresses on the astonishing values of the artistic life and gives her main observations that he had learnt from his own experience. Some of those are found debatable, but it surely seeks to motivate and welcome the new artists into the life of art. Therefore the author has succeeded in presenting the audience his experience and thoughts, aiming to inspire the fresh artists.
References:
- DiDonato, Joyce. “The Julliard School’s 109th Commencement Speech.” Julliard School’s 109th Commencement, Julliard School, New York. 27 May 2014.
- Stephenson, Raquel C. “Promoting Self-Expression Through Art Therapy.” Generations 30, 2006: 24-26. Print.
