As both a writer and a teacher, I am constantly confronted with the question: Does the world need more art? My answer to that is a resounding yes! Art is absolutely essential to our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world. It also has the power to transform, uplift, and inspire. A world without art would be a very bleak one indeed.
We are inherently meaning driven creatures, and all art grants meaning; it helps us make sense of our world and our experiences. It is the nature of our human psyches to understand the world in narrative ways. Story makes meaning of our experiences, and much of art (not just good writing) is story-driven.
Additionally, here are some other crucial reasons
Why the World Needs Art:
Art connects us with a deeper part of ourselves.
Art has the inherent power to bypass our “heads” and speak directly to our hearts and souls. Creativity teaches us in ways that intellectualism doesn’t and, actually, can’t. We can think a topic to death, but art lifts us out of the arena of “trying to figure it all out” and drops us into a deeper, experiential level of being.
Because of this, it has a greater power to shift our thinking by enabling us to hold, and understand, contradictory perspectives in ways that discussions with others do not.
This allows us to examine things in more profound ways than we might if we got stuck only in our heads. It is the job of the artist, and the great power of art, to examine oneself (and the world) and to tell the story of what one uncovers. In so doing, art can give us a deeper understanding of ourselves.
Art connects us with each other.
Because art holds such power to entertain different perspectives, it has the ability to connect us with each other in ways little else does. Art gives us a medium from which to share our needs, our fears, our desires, our hopes, our dreams, our failures, our perversions, our struggles, and so on.
On one level, this is about the healing that can come from knowing we are not alone. When we read a novel, watch a movie, listen to a song, or view a painting that resonates with us, we feel as though someone understands us at a deep level. It is a connection between ourselves and the filmmaker/author/singer/painter that also connects us to the world.
Even as art connects us to each other through similarity, it also has the power to evoke sympathy and compassion for our differences. It allows us the space to embrace the “other,” ultimately leading to greater inclusiveness.
In the end, it is compassion and a deeper understanding of others that will ultimately heal the world, and art helps make this happen.
Art changes us.
One of the great powers of art is its ability to take us away from ourselves, to entertain diverse perspectives, to hold space for difference, and to embrace change.
Artists delve into the deepest parts of their souls to uncover what resides there, and then they bring back what they find and hold it up to the light. It allows for deeper self-understanding, but those deeper truths are also transformative.
Just as the artist may change themselves in the process of making art, when that art is shared, it has the power to transform us as well.
How many times have you read a great book, watched a great film, or viewed a great painting and walked away with not only a deeper understanding of yourself, but with a new understanding?
Great art has the power to shift our perspectives so that when we walk away from it, we walk away profoundly changed.
Art changes the world.
Art defines cultures (and eras). We can learn so much about our values, and our hopes and fears, from the art produced by a culture and era. (I wrote an entire dissertation based on just this one idea.)
I challenge you to study any culture in any defined historical period, and you’ll see this to be true. You can come to know a people by their art.
Every bit as much as art reflects a culture, it has equal power to shape it. Art has a monumental impact on society that helps invoke change. Great art can be subversive by challenging the status quo, exposing the flaws in current ways of thinking, and introducing new ideas.
The artist turns over the rocks others would rather leave buried in the dirt, and challenges us to face what is ugly as well as what is beautiful. It can be a force behind social movements and political movements, and often has.
Art shows us who we are and challenges us to be better; it can show us who we can and will become.
It also has the power to integrate those same changes, making the unfamiliar familiar. The “other” becomes no longer a stranger, but a friend and ally. Art makes the world more inclusive, and, because of this, moves us ever more forward toward a more loving and compassionate society.
In conclusion
In the end, a world without art would be a world with no new ideas, no progress and innovation, and very little self-reflection, integration, and inclusion. So, artists of the world – unite! Go out and create, because the world needs your art.
(You can check out my art at SarahElizabethGraves.com.)
Do you know of any other reasons “why the world needs art”? Please share in the comments below! And what kind of art – if any – do you do? Feel free to share in the comments – because the world needs artists!
