I attended the Art Institute for a time in the 1990s. I thought to myself then, “I’m never going to teach philosophy. I know, I’ll be a painter!" Now, if you can explain that piece of reasoning to me, I’d be eager to hear it.
So, art and I go back a ways. I have many good memories from the Museum of the Art Institute in Chicago. While I was at school there, one day as I was covered in paint and wearing pretty shabby attire, this very old woman and I were both admiring a pencil drawing of a young girl by Balthus. We looked at one another and she, with tears in her eyes, whispered, “Beautiful.” It was one of those moments. Just lovely.
Okay, so I like art. And I am opinionated to a breathtaking degree on the subject. Don’t get me started.
That said, art is of little value. It’s fun. The music you like? Fun. The movies you like? Fun. The novels you like? Fun. And that is really what art mostly is.
Yes, as I mention in today’s “Food for thought” posting, art can provide insight. We can learn a lot from literature, for example. Anyone who has read Edward Said’s Orientalism, knows that Said (pronounced sy-eed) extracts an unbelievable amount of insight from the Western literary canon. Orientalism is a masterpiece of literary analysis.
The same can apply to inspiration. The likely reason I’m writing this blog and wrote those books is, back in high school, it occurred to me that the punk band the Dead Kennedys and the nineteenth-century writers Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson weren’t actually that far apart. That’s all it took. Gregory would never be the same. (Thanks, Mrs. Blasing.)
Art can be a very powerful, inspirational tool. It can inspire people to move mountains. Does the artist get any credit for this? Nope. Zero. The credit goes exclusively to the person who became active, who got busy. The songwriter just wrote a song, the poet just wrote a poem. They did nothing of moral value.
If the neighbor’s house is on fire, are you going to write a poem or grab a bucket?
And art therapy has become a serious practice. People suffering from various types of trauma are being treated with music and art and art creation, and clinicians are getting results. Again, does the artist get credit (not including the person in therapy—who probably doesn't get moral credit either)? Precisely none of it.
Art is a pleasure, but it’s usually just that: it’s fun, it’s a diversion, it’s playtime. And it frequently doesn’t amount to much beyond that.
So, when you go to that Holocaust film and discuss the film with friends afterwards, please don’t think you have participated in a moral activity. You have not. You’ve done nothing. You saw a movie. You might as well have watched Sharknado.
