“Banish all poets and artists”. The warning cry of Socrates still holds true. He believed that if you want a true and just society all poets and artists are to be banished since they are harmful purveyors of false illusions.
A strange way for an Art Teacher to open an article on the importance of art you might say but let us ask ourselves do we need art?
Socrates was not a foe of the arts as the quote above might suggest. His meaning was not as it may first appear from this statement but rather quiet the opposite. A true humanist and seeker of truth, he proclaimed that one cannot call themselves educated unless they have an education in the arts. In fact he went as far as to say it was inhuman not to have a will to create.
His point was thus; Artists dream of a better world and ask “why can’t it be so?” In fact all inventions come from the creative side of the mind but Socrates says humankind does not need art, like a beast they can be born, find shelter, food and die all without the aid of art… but few do.
We have no rational physical need for cave paintings, or for music or poetry or storytelling. It's just that anthropologists (a person who studies the science and development of human beings) have found no culture so poor and desperate that it doesn't have them.
What separates us from animals is our will to create, not like a spider whose creative webs are a means to capture; from the moment quality enters our mind we become artists. This is a feature in all of our lives, from picking the clothes that suit us to the choice and arrangement of our material goods in our homes.
Some impulse takes us beyond the bare bone requirements of existence. Our ancestors didn't just mold clay into a container to carry water, they decorated it with pictures of animals and flowers and gods. A church needs no more than walls and a roof to fulfill its mission, but that doesn't stop us from adding spires and stained glass. We need no more than bare stitchery to hold our clothes and blankets and quilts together, but we add embroidery and carved buttons. A plain box-shaped house will meet our actual needs, but we add gables and bay windows and parquet floors, and then we rearrange nature to suit and order the flowers and shrubs and trees that will surround us. Our babies need diapers and bottles, but to stimulate their senses we also give them mobiles and teddy bears.
Art is not just a means of escapism, a dream of a better world or time. It is no coincidence that I included a character from “Prison-break” the hit TV series to adorn the top of this page. The idea of the art on his body will be his salvation is what appealed to me. The tattoo draped around his torso containing the prisons blueprint submerged in a work of art reminds the open minded amongst us that art truly is the path to freedom. This is becoming more and more evident with the dramatic development of Art Therapy. All though Art has always been used in the attempt to understand the workings of the human-mind, please remember when shown an ink-blot by a psychoanalyst and asked “What do you see here?” It is just an ink-blot but it is the creative mind that imagines it as “a bat”, “two penguins kissing” and so on.
Nobody sees the world exactly as you do; what seems simple and obvious to us is a totally novel or wrongheaded notion to someone else. Whether we believe we are right and must convince everybody else, or that we are all blind men examining an elephant, each with a portion of the truth, we seem driven to show others what the world looks like to us. (See end of article for story of the blind men and the elephant).
Art will always be the oldest recorded language, whether its cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphs or some other series of symbols carved or painted. But it is not just a means to communicate with our piers but with all those that come after us. That need to make the world acknowledge our presence seems every bit as basic as our drive for food and water. As the only species that realizes we must die, we leave our signature to force the world to remember us. We pass on the stories of our tribe -- our loves, our hatreds, and our years of wandering in the desert. In poetry and drama and paintings we tell about the gods who loved us and the tricksters who deceived us. With rock paintings and skyscrapers and tombstones and "I was here," we demand the world's respect. Though we may be such things as dreams are made on, we are "the hungry ghosts, crying remember me, remember me."
And sometimes, art has no greater justification -- and needs none -- than sheer playfulness. Maybe you make up a poem with three syllable rhymes because it's a challenge and it's funny and people clap if you pull it off. Or it might be a way of answering the IF questions: you're wondering what would happen if humans had to compete with plants on an equal basis, and so you write a story like The Day of the Triffids to figure it out.
"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." Plato
This brings me back to the original question I posed, “Why do we need art, and why do we need artists?” I believe that art, like food, shelter and clothing, is a fundamental requirement of life, necessary for our humanity, for our human quest for wisdom, where, in the words of our wonderful Robert Henri, "There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this hope that the arts were invented. Sign-post on the way to what may be. Sign-posts toward greater knowledge”
Remember, “We are the Music Makers and we are the Dreamers of Dreams” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Every person should be encouraged to create .Is there anything more important?
From the creative department
Mr. Delohery
The Elephant and the Blind Men
Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."
They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.
"Oh, no! It is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.
"Oh, no! It is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.
"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.
"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.
"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."
"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.
The moral of the story is that there may be some truth to what someone says. Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes not because they may have different perspective which we may not agree too. So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should say, "Maybe you have your reasons." This way we don’t get in arguments. In Jainism, it is explained that truth can be stated in seven different ways. So, you can see how broad our religion is. It teaches us to be tolerant towards others for their viewpoints. This allows us to live in harmony with the people of different thinking.
This is known as the Syadvada, Anekantvad, or the theory of Manifold Predictions.
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