Art, who needs it?! By Laure de Boisgelin

 

“To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts, such is the duty of the artist...” wrote the 19^th century composer Robert Schumann. Indeed, from cave paintings to digital art, art has held an essential place in our everyday lives. Art, in its many forms, has existed in every community and every culture since time began, but why is it so indispensable to human beings ?

But, what is art? It is, according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary : “the expression or application of creative skill and imagination, especially through a visual medium such as painting or sculpture.”

Do we realise that art is present in your everyday lives? Do we really pay any attention to it? In my opinion, I would say not. Nevertheless, art is a part of our lives; we “live” it, all the time and every day! From the vase in our living room to the song we are listening to, from the drawing we made on a piece of paper to a museum we visited, from the essay we did in class to the poem we are reading... Art is omnipresent. Paul Strand, the 20^th century American photographer, said : “The artist’s world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.” Art, then, surrounds us, but we can’t see it if we aren’t aware that someone, for example, has drawn the lamp we have in our bedroom. This someone has been careful of every detail of this lamp, and someone else has created it: it’s design, it’s art.

Although art is mostly created by one person, it is also a shared experience ; a painting is made to be admired, a song to be listened to, theatre and dance to be watched, etc… It then becomes a silent dialogue between the artist and the spectator ; do we see the same thing that another person sees ? Do we understand what message the artist has tried to transmit to us ? We will take a famous example, “La Gioconda” by Leonardo da Vinci. People come to the Louvre from the entire world to admire this work of art. People share thoughts and feelings about the painting, but they also have their individual experience of its mystery...

In what ways does art help us ? First of all, art allows people to express themselves; it's a mean of expressing what an artist feels and thinks. For example: the bombing of Guernica in 1937 inspired Picasso to create his famous painting in order to squeeze out the horror and the anger he felt. This painting denounces barbarity, violence and war. Art allows people to share a point of view or a political opinion, to oppose something, to suggest, to stimulate thought, to provoke, to encourage... During the Second World War, “Liberté”, a poem by Paul Eluard, was parachuted to the members of the French Resistance, who were hiding in the “maquis”, to encourage them in their fight against Nazism. As Van Gogh said : “How rich art is; if one can only remember what one has seen, one is never without food for thought or truly lonely, never alone”.

Art is also used in a religious way, to glorify a god, or during rituals like the Egyptians in their funeral ceremonies, to ensure an afterlife for the dead person.

Art is used in healing too. The process of creating art engages both the body and the mind and provides us with time to look inward and reflect. It is used to make our lives better and used too in psychological tests.

Art is present everywhere and all the time, we can’t deny it or reject it. We all need it. I agree with John Lubbock, the 19^th century British historian and biologist, when he says : “Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.”