THE SUPREME ARTIST
(1979)
by Raj Arumugam
The Supreme Artist is an abstract play about abstract
thought. I wrote this one act-play in 1979.
This play is a tribute to all artists (painters, writers, sculptors, poets,
dancers, etc) in history, whose struggles have provided us with the freedom
and rights we all take for granted.
Modern democracies, it seems, are fast forgetting the experience of the artist struggling against dictatorial powers.
We have also forgotten, perhaps since the fall of the Soviet Union and the
Berlin Wall, the role artists played in creating for us the freedom and
rights we enjoy.
Perhaps this forgetting is the result of the crass materialism that characterises
modern democracies. And perhaps artists are partly to blame for this forgetting.
Artists too seem to have succumbed to materialism as they, like the world
they are supposed to lead, give priority to profit rather than to art –
and thus descend into the trivial, the banal and the mediocre.
The Supreme Artist, written in 1979, is a celebration of the contribution of artists towards the freedom we all enjoy.
The Supreme Artist is an abstract work more suited, if at all, for film
rather than the stage. There should not, however, be a problem, staging
it in the imagination.
The text is presented with minor alterations to the original text of 1979.
Raj Arumugam
October 2006
The picture in this work is entitled Supernova Remnant LMCN132D and is from the NASA collection.
The Supreme Artist © Raj Arumugam 2006
All rights reserved. For permission for performance, please write to raj@ttsworld.com.au