Why Art is More Important than you could Ever Imagine

To imagine how important something is, you have to conceive of a world without it and see how well you would get along in that world. With art, this may be impossible. But let’s give it a shot anyway. We could try being James Stewart in a cruel waste land where art had “never been born,” but even its magical creator/our guardian angel Art Guy in Jeans, no matter how creative he is, will initially be at a loss. A world without art is a world without aesthetic design, visual advertising, or cool cars. James Stewart would be tremendously confused. I can barely think of any objects that don’t incorporate art in their inception. Naturally occurring objects, I suppose.

So let us imagine Bedford Falls as a completely natural landscape, with nothing made by human hands. Okay, maybe there are some people wielding primitive tools, tools that serve no purpose but to kill animals or glean water from the soil. If they are wearing clothing, it is for warmth, but the clothing should not be shaped in any aesthetically directed way. Let’s look around at the animals. There goes an eagle. “What a beautiful specimen,” says James Stewart (or George Bailey if you will). Watch out, George. To appreciate an object’s aesthetic value is to impose an idea of artistic creation onto its maker. George defends himself. “Now look, I didn’t say it’s a work of God; it’s just pretty, that’s all.” True enough. Maybe we can separate the pretty things that are naturally created from the pretty things that are artistically created. In other words, it’s not fair to call clown fish works of art, even though they look like someone painted them. Someone might say “Mother Nature really outdid herself” or something like that. But either you believe in a Divine Creator with artistic motivations, or nature is naturally selecting the more likely to live from the less likely to live, and those most likely to be born from sexually successful fathers and mothers are often the prettier ones. Don’t let the nature channels fool you. Clown fish do not willingly grow their own spots.

Alright, alright, we don’t have to dig much further into the “What is art” discussion today, except to reiterate that good looking cars are and that clown fish aren’t. Now, we can all agree that mountains and coral reefs look pretty damn good, and wandering around in nature results in some awesome photographs. Some people spend their entire careers in nature, and they never have to worry their heads about art. A lot of people would say that God is the supreme artist, and that I cannot argue with, but for the most part when people talk about “art” they are referring to visual works by human hands, intended for viewing and appreciating in and of itself. Even though I consider all architecture art, we’ll leave it out of the equation for right now, just to be extra harsh on my hypothesis.

In some ways, art is proof that we have moved from survival to civilization. It's the reason people choose Building and Loan over Potter's bank. Luxury has something to do with air conditioning, great food, and comfy furniture, but it has a whole lot more to do with visual surroundings. Every living room I walk into has pictures on the walls. Furniture I sit in is designed foremost to look excellent. A chair that perfectly performs its function to seat me is inferior in anyone’s eyes to the gorgeous one that also seats me. Art does not replace function, but by now it is a necessary addition. Even if you are not materialistic, you know your room has gone bad when you let it get dirty, and health issues are not the primary concern. Art isn’t necessarily what make our lives livable, it is what makes are lives enjoyable. At this point in our evolution, life has to be enjoyable.

So don’t let anyone tell you that art isn’t important. We know, at the level of visual surroundings, that art is crucial to enjoying life. Even if you work all day in a box and come home at night to a box, remember that minimalism is an art movement too, and some designer put a significant amount of effort into making your living/working space aesthetically interesting. If you don’t like it, that is proof that your opinions and life choices are shaped in some way by artistic preference. If you spend your whole life in tents in the Himalayas, and find it beautiful, you have created an aesthetic program for which parts of the world you would like to see, which is in itself a work of art. There is simply no escape from art.

Okay, but then why are art museums important? Why is Mona Lisa important? Why is it worth my time to go to a place just to look at something? Art Guy in Jeans can’t tell you why he spends hours and hours in museums, but he does, and he’s not particularly ashamed of it. If we accept that hanging a 20^th century reproduction of the 15^th century Birth of Venus by Botticelli can augment the beauty and the enjoyment level of sitting in your living room, then at the very least we can appreciate the original craftsmanship of the first version. Art Guy in Jeans gets a chill from looking into the tempera on panel eyes of Aphrodite as she drifts onto the shore in her sea shell vessel, a billowing breeze catching him off guard. Even if this fantastic event never happened, looking straight at the original painting is the closest we ever come to bearing witness to it. And it happens over and over as long as we stand in front of it. A life without Birth of Venus would be a life without this event. A life without art would ultimately be a life without representation of the events in the Bible, the events in Mythology, or the real events that we don’t get to see in person. In the case of Velasquez’s Las Meninas, a thousand words don't even do the trick. If anything, art is a tangible motivation for the perks of civilization over pure survival. To successfully reject art from your life, you would become a primitive being. Even if you were cool with this, it would be quite a trick to accomplish.