Is Art Useless?

I assume you can tell what kind of knowledge and skills societies value by how much they emphasize these skills in schools and how much you can get paid to use them once you are working.

It’s not a mystery that STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Mathematics) are the most prestigious and kids are encouraged to do well in them.  No parent is devastated if their kid is bad at drawing, but they know that if their kid is bad at math it will affect their choices for a future career.

The top 20 or so best paying jobs in the US are science oriented.  Doctors, engineers, computer nerds.  The first ones who were not trained primarily as scientists are judges, an occupation society needs to keep society functioning.

It’s clear that our society has decided that science was the way to go.  Kids who are good at math and science can look forward to a great career of some sort, society makes it clear that it needs you and will reward you.  If you happen to be good at history or acting, that is another issue.   You can still find a spot and make your way in life, but it will be a lot harder and you will get paid less. 

The reason science is so valued is that it gives us comfort.  Doctors give us a longer and better life, engineers allow us to travel further faster and in comfort, our houses are well-designed and we can communicate with the entire world cheaply and instantaneously through computers and internet. 

But maybe we can’t see the forest for the trees.  We value progress, because we remember when planes did not exist or life’s expectancy was a lot shorter.  But some things have always been there and we take them for granted.   Art, for example.

There is no society without art.  Prehistoric caves are decorated with art, all societies adorn themselves, their surroundings and their objects with art one way or another, they make music and they tell stories.  It is not a cultural trait, it is a human trait – even if of course the type of art you are going to produce is influenced by your culture.  We know that tattoos or even clothes are cultural.  They cropped up in one society and not another.  Entire societies have been perfectly fine without them.  But art is everywhere. 

You can argue that art is not necessary to survival and you might be right.  When you’re struggling for your life, you don’t find the time to paint.  A lot of people see art as a leisure activity, not a serious pursuit.  And yet, art was present in concentration camps.  Prisoners made music and drew.  Art was a way for them to remember their humanity and give themselves the strength to resist.  So art can be a survival skill.

And anyway, survival is not the goal.  Of course, we want to survive, but we want more than that.  The fact that most people in America own a car (or several) and a mobile phone (and computer, laptop, tablet….) demonstrates that we are far beyond survival mode. 

I believe that art is one of the things that make our societies great.  We are amazed at some of the skills Romans and Greeks had, like sewers and heated water, we value Pythagoras and Archimedes for their mathematical discoveries but we are at least equally amazed by their art, their mosaics, their ceramics, their fiction writings ( like the Iliad and Odyssey), their sculptures and that’s what people want to experience when they visit Italy or Greece. They’re interested in ancient art, not ancient sewers.   Ancient Greece and Italy are an example I know well, but of course it applies to all civilizations no matter where.   In an archeological museum about any culture, the objects displayed are decorated and “artified” in some ways, not just plain everyday objects, unless you go so far back in the past that they are very few objects left (but there are still cave paintings to demonstrate the artistry of those civilizations).   

Regarding the importance of art, I think we’re asking the wrong questions.  I recently did a business training to help me launch my art business, and in the first class I was asked to define what problem my business solves.  I have no idea what kind of problem art solves in general, and my art in particular.  I know that art is here for a reason, because it’s always been there.  We’re just not smart enough to know why we need it.

 Art is not useless, I would argue that it’s so important to our survival as a society that we don’t even realize it.  People keep making art.  Art is so necessary that kids who have never been exposed to it will find themselves making some anyway.  All artists know that they most likely will not become rich, but they are compelled to create art, and society takes it for granted, a little like women have always been willing to take care of kids and sick or elderly people for next to no money (no money at all if you’re talking about their own family), and society takes it for granted as well.

Our society got into the bad habit to give monetary value to everything and therefore consider things people are doing for free as not valuable, not realizing that if we keep doing it, it means that it has to be done at all costs.  After all, if parents decided to stop looking after their kids unless they got paid for it, kids would die and humanity would disappear eventually.  Maybe if we stopped doing art altogether, our society would collapse as well.   We just don’t know. 

It reminds me of this parable:  an old guy plays the flute every morning when the sun rises.  A kid asks him why, and he says that if he doesn’t, the sun won’t rise.  The kid laughs, but when the old guy dies, the next morning he picks up the flute and play when/so  the sun rises.  And who can tell if the music makes the sun rise, or if the sun would rise anyway?  The kid doesn’t know, and doesn’t want to take a chance.   Neither should we take a chance with art for fear that when it is gone, we realize we cannot live without it. Like we took our planet, its climate, animals (bees, worms,….), vegetation (food, oxygen), fresh air, clean water for granted and are just starting to realize that we cannot live without it.

I dream of a society that would realize it needs artists as much as it needs doctors or engineers.  Artists would be compensated to produce art and just give their art away for free. I have a “free pottery” box in front of my house where I put some of my pieces, giving art to the community because I can afford to, but I also need to sell if I want to keep doing this.   They are grants and patrons for the art, but how does it compare to grants available to fund science projects?  How many more opportunities are there to get funding when you work in the science field as when you work as an artist?  Some people think of art as unnecessary, and still, they have art on their walls and watch series on TV.  All the art they “consume” has been produced by artists who made huge financial and personal sacrifices to get their art into the world so they can enjoy it.  I would like more people to realize our dependence on art.  Science makes us comfortable, but art makes us who we are.  

I recently watched an artist arguing that art was useful because it could change the world. He was writing comic books and said that his writing could have an impact on the real world and change the way people think. It’s true, art can do that. But even if you like making little bunnies out of clay (or rainbows. I recently made some rainbows! I guess it could be seen as an activism or sorts, because rainbows make beautiful flags. But rainbows are beautiful for their own sake too), your art is still important, because you bring beauty into the world. I really believe this very simple metaphor: our world is embroiled in this ongoing battle between good and evil, within each person and within society itself. Sometimes evil is winning and people hate each other (or themselves). Sometimes good is winning and we’re creating beauty and trying to understand each other. Most of the time we’re at a standstill, but that’s a victory of sorts. Just keep pushing against evil and creating little bunnies or books that will change people’s minds. It’s not important what you do to fight for the good side, as long as you are doing your part. Good and evil are not religious for me, but if religions help you make sense of the world and fight for the good guys, that’s great.

Before I conclude, I want to add that this debate about the uselessness or usefulness of art takes another layer of meaning for me because my area is ceramics.  As a ceramic artist, it is a loaded subject.  Is ceramics even an art, or merely a “craft” and what is the difference between the two?  Ceramics is often divided into two types: “functional” and “sculptural”.   On one end of the spectrum live the crafts workers, and on the other end the artists.   On the one end they are purely functional object with glazes that are practical and uniform to make the pot food safe and not to decorate and on the other end there are purely decorative objects that cannot be used for anything.  However the overlap is huge, and even if that’s not what the artist intended, you can almost always use a sculpture to hang something on it - hat, scarf, coat, necklaces…   if nothing else it can be used as a book end or door stopper - and you can decorate a functional object to the point where you’re never going to use it at all, because they’re way too ornate and decorative to risk damaging them.  I bought a bowl from a ceramic artist (Isabelle Leclercq) that could be used to put something in it, but I will not do this.   I get a lot more for my money from looking at it and marveling at its presence in my house than from using it.  It would not be a very practical object, it’s heavy and its exterior is quite rough so I would hurt my hands when holding it.  Do I care?  No, because I didn’t buy it as a functional object.  And maybe some people buy sculptures on purpose to hang their scarves on?  Who can tell what is functional and what isn’t?  Who can tell what is art and what is not? 

What I know is that art is necessary to our society on a primal level.  We know this because no culture has ever done without it. I wish that everyone started valuing art for what it’s worth: a pillar of every society, and not just a pretty pastime to decorate the walls.

Bowl by Isabelle Leclercq, useless or functional?