For me, a painter, art provides a refuge from
the harsh face history has turned on us, just
as "making things" was my childhood
refuge from an unhappy family. But that's
not saying much:
5 artists will always make
art for themselves and each other, even if
times are bad (think the Abstract
Expressionists before they were recognized.)
Far more important is that doing art is a way
10 to touch others, to reinforce bonds of
community-perhaps to create beauty that
gives a few people a rest from their
problems, or the energy to keep working to
improve their own or others' lives. Art can
15 be a commitment to values that do not
depend on a secure world.
I often think of the Italian Renaissance, a
terrible period politically, when mercenary
armies roamed Italy, ruling families
20 poisoned each other, and plagues struck
repeatedly-but also an age when
extraordinary artistic creativity flourished.
The Renaissance is a reminder that living a
decent life is not entirely dependent on
25 living in decent times: a reminder that the
terrors of our time need not be totally
consuming, that we can live with a
connection to other eras and other people
who sought meaning and beauty in the midst
30 of turmoil and fear.
Art is a perpetually self-renewing source of
energy: that is the best definition of art, as
opposed to decoration or illustration, that I
have ever found. We need that source of
35 energy as we face this challenging political
and economic world. And that need goes far
beyond the visual arts; different people find
energy in different places, so we need
poetry, drama, music, architecture, dance,
40 film, literature, just as much as painting.
Making art and seeking to create beauty are
acts of faith in the future, in the survival of
the values of humanism-faith that we will
get through the threats facing us, the
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45 crumbling of the economic and political
world we've known, the dying forests and
rising seas due to climate change. Art
demands recognition that human lives
matter, that chaos can be transmuted into
50 beauty and courage.
When I'm frightened by our times (as I often
am), I sometimes picture the cave paintings
of France and Spain, which may date back
32,000 years. We don't know the states of
55 mind of the artists who created beauty so
early in our history. Perhaps they were
celebrating successful hunts, with feelings of
gratitude, or perhaps they were imploring
the power that brought-or failed to bring-
60 the animals they needed for survival.
Perhaps they painted out of hunger and
desperation. Either way, they went to a lot of
trouble to make their paintings, paintings
that speak to us across an enormous span of
65 years. We can barely imagine their lives, but
we respond to their creations and know they
were creatures like us.
Art has the same importance in our
threatening era that it had when the cave
70 painters worked, or ancient Greek bards
turned the slaughter of the Trojan War into
poetry that survives to this day; when
European craftsmen in gold and gems
created beauty to praise their God in the
75 dark ages after Rome fell, or twelfth-century
artists of New Mexico's Mimbres people
painted whimsical animals and stunning
abstract designs on their pottery; when
young poets in the trenches of World War I
80 wrote about the rendezvous with death that
they knew awaited them, or painters during
the Great Depression (some who would
become famous, many who would be
forgotten) created murals in American
85 courthouses and post offices.
We make art-we turn to art as a source of
the energy we need in good times and bad-
because we're human, and art is one of the
essential things we do to be human.
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