A Defense of Art

The Necessity of the Useless

From a viewpoint resembling something utilitarian, the art’s role in society is useless. People pay a lot of money to own or view some example of creativity, without any tangible benefit coming of it. Imagine the millions spent on movies, concerts, paintings, sculptures and the like in the past year. How much money did The Dark Knight Rises or The Avengers gross? Enough to feed a continent’s worth of underprivileged children, I’d bet.

Historically, nothing artistic or creative really appears until four to six thousand years ago, after, you know, human beings evolved into Homo sapiens after a few million years, finally figured out how to domesticate crops and cattle, built permanent towns and cities and then wondered aloud, after all that hard work, “What now?” So they decided to carve some shit in marble.

Thus art has an unfortunate, but well-deserved, connection to leisure. It is created by a sense of leisure and it itself causes leisure. Again, most people with any utilitarian proclivities write off artistic enterprises as something best left to the lazy bourgeoisie, or the goddamned hippies. No, my proletarian and/or profit-seeking mind and body are best dedicated to hard work, not froofy finger-painting shenanigans. It is these soulless twerps who dominate conversations about cutting funding for school art programs. The music and art departments can make impassioned pleas about the intrinsic benefits of learning an instrument or creating a masterpiece that your parents can enthusiastically hang on the refrigerator and then quickly cover with magnets and reminders about your next dentist appointments. But the soulless twerps generally win out, even in the face of evidence that skills learned through music lessons improve students’ math and science competencies (albeit “modestly”).

And so, for at least the time being, it seems that new generations will be taught to calculate and write sentences. They will go to P.E. and suffer and sweat (unless everyone becomes too fat to exercise properly). But they may miss out on music class. They may never mold a little cup out of clay. They may never play an F instead of an F# during their important solo. They may never forget the lyrics in the middle of a concert.

(Warning: Digression Ahead)

But at least they will be properly prepared to enter the workforce? Right?

I mean, that’s why we are all here. Whether or not you believe in gods, it is definitely obvious that human beings exist solely to create tools, exploit these tools for profit, make other tools with this profit and then kill each other with these newly created tools. I’m sure of it.

And with a ferocious clatter of steel, the train returns to its track.

This is where the many arguments about the value of art fall short. Those criticizing creativity’s role in the world start with a cost-benefit analysis of the activity. Those in defense maintain that there are intrinsic benefits and lessons. They may even give in to the horrible corporate mentality of their opponents and talk about how participation in artistic ventures fosters “teamwork” and “out-of-the-box-thinking” and “an-ability-to-unquestionably-trust-authority.”

But most of art’s defense rests on these experiences that we will all to soon begin to remember fondly.

Remember when Clarence nailed his saxophone solo during the 10^th grade spring concert? What about when Jack’s freshman year painting of a chipmunk was hung up in the town hall? Remember when we  made out in an art museum? Or when we saw the Mona Lisa? That book I read after graduating college was so good; what was the title again?

Like every other experience we have in our lives, art class is important because it provides our future selves with one of the many pillows we will rest our heads upon as we drift slowly to a meaningless and eternal sleep. Its greatest value, by this argument, is entirely reflective.

Much less often argued is what I believe to be art’s most important benefit, a benefit that is, by contrast, entirely projective.

Art, be it in the form of song, painting, literature, tire sculpture or dance, is a key to understanding humanity. It unlocks feelings and emotions within us that are vital to the human condition, keystones to the human experience. Anyone who has gotten angry during the second act of a movie, excited during the crescendos of a song or weepy at the sight of a still-life, will understand this.

An example: I was, am and most likely will be a terribly, regretfully bitter and cynical person. I have my short list of loves and pleasures, with masturbation startlingly high on it. There are very few moments in which I believe I experienced true and genuine emotion. I wept like I never have while I read the last Harry Potter book. I was excited enough to get into a fist-fight after watching Braveheart. Bruce Springsteen’s “Jungeland” is a song that wrenches me with unimaginable compassion. Art, in the broadest sense, has helped me understand what I think is most difficult to understand: myself.

It can help us all.