Art: Luxury or Necessity?

Hello, folks. Be ye warned, today’s post will likely contain a good bit of philosophical rambling. We may not reach a conclusion. Still, it never hurts to exercise our minds, and even if we reach no definitive answer, we will certainly come away having a renewed appreciation for the complexity of God’s creation and the true smallness of our own intelligence.

Is art a luxury or a necessity? If you’ve dipped into the realms of debate, philosophy, theology, or, well, art, then you’ve likely heard this question. It comes down to, “do we need art or not?”

Let’s look at the word ‘need.’ Need how? Need for survival? Need for a fulfilling life? Need for being human?

Do we need art to survive? Strictly speaking, I should say not. We need food, water, oxygen, and protection from the elements to survive.

But what about to live? To be human, made in God’s image?

I like to think about Chesterton’s quote about how laughter is peculiar to the human race, as is the act of making art. He points out that we don’t see birds making their nests in a gothic cathedral style — or inventing any styles at all. Art would certainly seem to be part of human nature, then. We create styles and techniques, certainly something you won’t see a beaver doing as he builds his dam. That beaver will build his dam just like every other beaver does. The thought of experimenting never comes into an animal’s mind.

I think we can agree, then, that when taken from a Christian perspective, art is, if not a necessity for survival, at least a necessity insofar as it is a key component of ourselves. Now, it is, of course, a luxury when one is financially well-off and able to spend leisure time in painting, writing, or playing music. But even the man who scrapes by for his every penny exercises his artistic abilities. He arranges the cobbled-together furniture in his hut a particular way, or he whistles to himself, or — even has he no knowledge of a tune or furniture to arrange, he uses his imagination. Indeed, that ability to conceive of something not in existence, or in a configuration not yet physically manifested, is, I think, a great part of our being made in God’s image. Animals don’t imagine.

I heard the statement the other day in a documentary about how some scientists had trained a fish to drive around a robotic cart that tracked the fish’s motions. They said that fish had had exactly the same amount of time to evolve as we humans had, and thus, were just as smart as we are, but just in different ways that suited their habitat.

Then why, I asked, have the fish not invented robots? If fish are as smart as we are, why haven’t they got an economy, or made any scientific inquiries, or made any works of art? Fish don’t even have homes, at least in the personalized sense that we do. There’s nothing to differentiate Nemo’s anenome from any other thousand anenomes he could hang out in. The aspects of creating, personalizing, building, and so forth, are unique to humans — as is the natural transition, then, to owning.

But I’m getting off-track. The original question was about whether art was a luxury or a necessity? We then proceeded to define terms somewhat, and then get into a discussion of human nature. But the crux, I think, of the question, comes down to how one defines need. One could lock a person up in a sterile room with only oxygen, water, and food and he would survive, of course. It wouldn’t be much of an existence, however, and even, try as you may, you might find him scratching his name into the wall with a fragment of his dish or doing whatever small things he could to make his surroundings more beautiful.

I see I should also take a moment to define art. Some mean it in the sense of something lofty and grandiose, like the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. Others could mean by it the simple human compulsion to create and beautify — to draw with our fingers in the dirt or to braid one’s hair and stick a flower in it. In the sense of this article, I am referring to the more general second usage. The first is more like an excellent manifestation of the second, the second form of art perfected or resulting in something skillful, unique, and appealing.

I think we can agree, then, that art is a necessity in the sense that it is impossible to avoid. Every culture, no matter how primitive and impoverished, has art. It has its stories, its music, its pebble calendars or face-paint. Is it something we, theoretically, could go without? Sure, but then we might not really be truly human, truly made in the image of a Creator God. It all really boils down to one’s definitions — something you should always be clear on before the discussion commences.

What about you, reader? Would you define things differently? Come at the argument from another angle? Offer a new perspective? I would love to hear your thoughts and engage with you. Please, leave a comment.

Thank you for reading. I wish you a good week. Keep shining!

Ciao!