What do you think? Is art frivolous or a necessity in society?

I suppose it depends on the times, and the art. If you’re living in what feels like a mad world, then a beautiful piece of art pulls one back to remember what is still possible. Another artist might paint the ugliness of the times to try to achieve the very same thing.

Or is that true? That same painting which I may label “ugly” might be actually be “beautiful” to the artist painting it. There are a million versions of anything, depending on the lens through which it is viewed. Every person sees the same painting in a gallery just a little bit differently than the person standing next to them.

Or do they? This is true only insofar as the viewer is able see it through a lens other than the precise one that society dictated as “correct”. We are all shaped by our cultures and their group beliefs, which hone our own biases and perspectives. Those perspectives carved in the collective stone can be a very difficult thing to break out of.

Artists are used to being censored by masses that largely want to view life and the world as the one painted in the “acceptable style” of the day. Ask the French Impressionists (as just one example of an art movement), whose work was rejected by the respected art salons of the day. Different is dangerous; it generates a cognitive dissonance that most find uncomfortable. It certainly doesn’t sell.

Which bring us to money, and how we so often talk about the value of anything firstly in terms of currency. Will a society so deeply rooted in money, and the idea of outward material wealth, ever fully embrace something that feeds the inner human, not firstly the outward one? In society as it exists now, it would be easy to argue that artistic expression is merely the “icing on the cake” of life.

But what if it’s not just the icing? What if it’s actually the flour and water, the practical and necessary ingredient to create an elevated society?

Artists do not merely beautify the world, they raise questions and generate wider perspectives, and even in the face of censorship, they answer the inner call to create it. This can be in the form of a painting, music, writing, or other vehicle(s) of artistic expression.

That which flows out of the human being with urgency to be expressed, I suggest is not frivolous at all. It is an expression of the human soul, a reflection back to our inner selves where the real answers wait to be found. These, I think, are the paving stones of a brighter road forward, one that leads to a more elevated society that respects and nurtures the soul journey of the human being.

So I ask you again, “What do you think? Is art frivolous or a necessity in society?”

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© Susan L Hart / SusanLHart.com / HarteBooks.com / Subscribe