Why We Need Art Right Now

Photo by Zach Key on Unsplash

A global pandemic. A war raging in Europe. Racial injustice. Gun violence. Rising inflation, gasoline, and food costs. With everything going on in the world right now, a seemingly logical question may be, "why would anyone bother with art right now?" Or we may hear, "Art is a luxury, not a necessity". But is that really so?

In my last post I mentioned how art, specifically the philosophy of kintsugi, helped people deal with the stress caused by dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Historically, art has always been an escape, or more specifically, a therapeutic aid in helping a society deal with stressful events. For instance, I've also recently discussed how artists have sought to express their feelings about war.

Expressing ourselves and how we view our world through art is a uniquely human trait, and it has been since the time of the first cave paintings. Now, we are slowly emerging from grasp of a worldwide pandemic, but artists in times past have also struggled to make sense of things when grappling with similar experiences. For instance, back in 2020 during the peak of COVID-19, many media outlets compared it to the1918 Spanish Influenza outbreak. Edvard Munch was an artist living during that time who actually contracted the flu and he dealt with his experience with it through his own art.

Edvard Munch, Self Portrait with Spanish Flu, 1919, oil on canvas

And I suspect that it is true for very many people, artist or not. Surely most can relate to being moved by viewing a favorite piece of art, reading a favorite poem, or listening to a piece of music.

The Beast, an original character I developed during my high school years to help me deal with the anxiety and teenage angst.

But, I digress. Peter Birkhäuser is an artist who, like Munch, used art to cope with the crises he faced in life; specifically, his art style changed tremendously after he suffered a midlife crisis. He then turned to Jungian psychology to help himself heal and the fantastical art he produced during this time bears that out.

The World's Wound by Peter Birkhäuser

More recently, art has been utilized as a medium to voice concern over social injustice, such as in the death of George Floyd.

Image by F. Muhammad from Pixabay

Bottom line is, art in some form or fashion has always been important to human beings, and even in this age of social media likes, influencers, and such, and perhaps even because of such things, art and artistic expression is needed now even more than ever. Some blogs will wax philosophical and use beautiful, flowery language to tell you why art is still necessary and important in our modern society. I could do the same-but I won't. Aristotle has already

said it best:

“The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance”

See you guys in the next one.