I am admittedly biased in my views on the necessity of the arts; as a
poet and graphic artist, I have profited handsomely from the arts. In
my essay, below, I am not attempting to take a neutral stance on this
issue. I have an opinion, and shall attempt to express it without
presenting arguments which might be made in opposition to the points I
raise.
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Why are arts a necessity, like food and water, for true civilization?
The arts may be thought of metaphorically as the "heart" of a society,
while the sciences are its "brain." The arts and the sciences serve as
mutual supports of the body's well-being, and neither is capable of
supporting the body without the other.
If man were a machine which needed only fuel and shelter in order to
thrive, the arts would be unnecessary and meaningless. No one sings
arias to a microwave oven to make it happy; we don't need to write
sonnets to our automobiles in order to keep them functioning. However,
throughout recorded history it has been apparent that man's desire for
scientific and technological progress is typically accompanied by
creative spurts in music, literature, and the visual arts.
In some cases, there is a crossover; practitioners of the arts have
sometimes provided very specific inspirations which led to scientific
developments. As an example, the science fiction writer Arthur C.
Clarke is credited with having pioneered the concept of the
geostationary satellite. Ventriloquist Paul Winchell holds a patent on
an early prototype of an artificial heart.
It is difficult to imagine a society in which there were no poets,
novelists, playwrights, musicians, painters, or dancers. Such a
society would have its "bodily" needs met, but man is more than a
body. Without the emotional and spiritual nourishment of the arts,
even an otherwise advanced civilization would decay rather rapidly.
The arts serve as an archetypal unifier which brings humans together
in a deeply personal way. Anyone who has ever felt the ineffable
emotional "heat" of a shared concert experience can tell you that
there is something undefinably powerful in the wave of pleasure that
can engulf a group of people enjoying a common aesthetic "high."
Politicians, advertisers, and religious zealots have tried to harness
this power, only to find that it is like trying to nail Jell-O to the
wall. Art itself seems to have a presence which owes allegiance to no
single ideology, and which cannot, for long, be enslaved to serve the
ends of anyone who would try to control it.
Technological innovations make life livable, but the arts make life
bearable.
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Here are excerpts from several discussions related to mankind's need
of the arts:
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If they are packaged artfully, a city's attractions can amount to more
than the sum of their parts. Today, Chicago's Loop is so vibrant
people actually want to live there... Over time, that city's
government and business leaders launched creative tour programs,
reinvigorated the Cultural Center, planted greenery and flowers along
Chicago's streetscapes and enlivened downtown festivals. Buildings
went up, hotels were remodeled. Now there's a new home for the Chicago
Symphony and a new theater district. And the Loop's boundaries are
stretching farther to the south and west. Weisberg credits much of
this new energy to the arts. In fact, she believes every city needs to
consider the arts a necessity, every bit as much as police or fire
service.
Northern Illinois University Libraries: Art Gets the credit for the
New Energy in Chicago
http://www.lib.niu.edu/ipo/ii991206.html
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Students of the arts develop important traits. Researchers at UC
Irvine found that the study of music developed spatial-temporal
reasoning, which helps students do well in math, science, and
engineering. While children do not study higher math or engineering at
an early age, music develops the same inherent structure in the brain
that will later be used for those subjects. For example, Einstein was
an accomplished violinist. Music also builds listening skills,
coordination, concentration, creativity, memory, and cognitive skills,
to name just a few... The arts are a means of providing success for
students who have difficulty with other aspects of the school
curriculum. Study of the arts develops greater self-expression,
self-worth, discipline, commitment, self-confidence, and motivation to
read.
Personal Page of Tiffany Ng: Who Needs the Arts?
http://www.angelfire.com/tn/tifni/music/musiceducation.html
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Without the arts, civilization wouldn't exist. Societies are judged by
the record their members leave behind. The more refined the artistic
output, the more superior a civilization is deemed to be. Artworks
record a society's search for meaning and identity. They reflect the
common beliefs and practices of a body of people. At the same time,
they give voice to individual yearnings for truth, beauty, justice,
and freedom. Without these expressions, a society is both faceless and
voiceless undifferentiated from the unrelenting ebb and flow of time
and matter.
All Arts: Civilization Needs the Arts
http://www.allarts.org/help/essay-1.htm
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Theatre and all the arts hold a mirror up to society. They allow us to
see society in a new way, and they expose us to new elements of
society... It is vital that the arts continue to show aspects of
society. You can go to the Internet and point and click to see photos
of far-away lands and people, but only theatre can show the
interaction of people and places. Today, more than ever, theatre has
become increasingly vital. A healthy civilization needs the arts. I
hope that our world cultures will never blend into one -- that we
never lose the distinctions between cultures of each country, city, or
community. Theatre helps to preserve these distinctions. Theatre can
do period pieces to show life as it was. As they say, "To get to where
you’re going, you need to see where you've come from." ...Society
needs the mirror that the arts provides.
Linezine: What's Happening to Arts Education in the New Economy?
http://www.linezine.com/3.1/features/dscewhaene.htm
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...Our present cognitive sciences (and language and folk psychology)
give a particular analytic picture of the human mind and body. But
that picture is roundly contradicted by another coexisting set of
human intimations and intuitions... Within our scientific traditions,
we have developed methods for constructing theories and performing
experiments which are dependent on the analytic worldview. Between
the two is a no man's land. In it live and flourish the arts. I will
argue that the special province of the arts is to show people
themselves in a mirror which reflects their ordinary self image in the
light of that deeper and broader understanding.
Department of Anthropology, University of California at Santa Barbara:
Eastern Psychologies, the Arts, and Self-Knowledge
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/esm/IAM/ERosch.html
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...Participation in the arts and the humanities unlocks the human
potential for creativity and lifts us beyond our isolated
individualism to shared understanding. History, literature, ethics and
the arts offer lessons on the human condition that connect individuals
to the community and overcome the social fragmentation that many
Americans feel. To remain a robust civil society, our democratic
system needs the arts and the humanities.
National Endowment for the Arts: Preface/Strengthening Democracy
http://216.239.51.100/search?q=cache:pSTKV2_QuUEC:www.arts.gov/pub/PCAH/CRPreface.pdf+%22needs+the+arts%22&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8
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Since the making of art involves the representation and embodiment of
values, it is straightforward to conclude that: Works of art
concretize philosophical ideas. This is Premise 4. In the most
profound and distinctive art these ideas are, as Rand noted,
fundamental judgments that capture important philosophical issues...
Since the making of art involves the representation and embodiment of
values, it is straightforward to conclude that: Works of art
concretize philosophical ideas... fundamental judgments that capture
important philosophical issues. In a novel, we can see these judgments
in the essential nature of the characters and the moral choices they
make. A novelist... communicates a sense of what is important,
fascinating, worthy of regard. Even such stylized art forms as music
and dance involve using the media of sound and motion to present an
emotion-like sense of the world and of life.
The Objectivist Center: Why Man Needs Art
http://www.objectivistcenter.org/articles/wthomas_why-man-needs-art.asp
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My search strategy consisted of various combinations of the keywords
"arts," "need," "needs," "necessity," "man," "mankind," and
"civilization."
I hope this combination of opinion and source material has been
helpful. If anything I've said is in need of explanation, or if any of
the links do not function, please request clarification before rating
my answer, and I'll gladly offer further assistance.
Best regards,
pinkfreud |
