For two decades, Enrique Martinez Celaya has been thinking and writing about his life and work as an artist, examining his practice through philosophy, literature and science. What he has discovered is a provocative, sure-to-be-controversial view that stands in opposition to the way artists have been seen in the world since the dawn of modernism more than 100 years ago.

Put simply, Martinez Celaya proposes that artists can function as prophets.

"The Prophet" is the title of the lecture Martinez Celaya, the University of Nebraska Visiting Presidential Professor, will deliver at Omaha's Joslyn Art Museum on Friday.

"To be a prophet an artist doesn't need God but clarity of purpose, character and attention," Martinez Celaya writes in the lecture. Later, he states, "Joseph Beuys, Herman Melville, Marcel Broodthaers, Ayn Rand and Albert Pinkham Ryder were prophets not because they sat around theorizing but because they showed us something of the future and of ourselves."

That idea of the artistic prophet, which is rooted in a strong ethical outlook, runs counter to the prevailing view of artists responsible only to themselves, which Martinez Celaya called a double falsehood. Self standards are usually very low, and the work is based on fleeting whims of our commercially saturated age.

"It is ultimately inconsequential, in the same manner that the preoccupations of the Victorian era have no consequences today," he said. "All of that stuff wafts away. The next Art News, the next Artforum brings in more. It's just the machinery."

To illustrate how an artist can serve in a prophetic role, Martinez Celaya examines his own work, starting with "Coming Home," the installation of a large tar elk and boy in the collection of the Sheldon Museum of Art.

"My position is not, 'Look, I'm great, you're great, we're prophets.' My position is this is a way of being artists in the world at the level we are able to do it. We may not be able to do it at the level of Tolstoy, but having a moral imperative is a way to present yourself to the world rather than a title."

Martinez Celaya knows that "The Prophet" isn't likely to be well received in the art world, where artists are seen as entertainers, impresarios and social activists.

"I am completely aware of the perception and reading that a paper like this will have," he said. "It's not like I am naive. I've been around the block a few times. I'm not apologizing for it."

But he says he will continue to live and do his work on that basis. That starts with the construction of his new studio in Miami in a large warehouse in that city's art district, extends through his work in progress and to a program that he is implementing to educate and assist the urban poor in the area around the new studio.

"The Prophet" will also occupy a central, unifying role when the University of Nebraska Press publishes Martinez Celaya's collected writings next year.

"Is this too much to expect from artists?" he asks in the lecture. "Probably. It is likely we will all break our backs trying to be artists-prophets, but this is a better fate than letting our backs calcify from lack of action or hunch over in shame. Artists are not needed for anything else. Most artists will not be great prophets, but even very minor ones will make a difference. Maybe a difference in the art world, but certainly, and more importantly, in themselves and in the world."

Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.