What is Art and why should we appreciate it?

 

Art, by its most simplistic definition, is expression and expression is a form of power. It is the ability to convey something that evokes a particular response, that can bore into people’s minds and change their hearts, make them feel what the artist felt or spectate some small glimpse of a life outside themselves. 

Art lets us know that other people are real too. Sometimes we forget that, but art has this way of reminding us, connecting us to others through the human predilection for empathy. 

Art is subversive because expression has the power to eat away at the foundations of totalitarian regimes and traditional social norms. It is harder to stop art than it is to stop people. People are temporary and can be killed or silenced any number of ways but it’s far more difficult to erase the marks they’ve made.

When I think of the power of art, one of the first things that comes to mind is the use of war propaganda posters and how so much of what we think defines us as a nation, a people or even as individuals is really just an idea that was imposed on us by the culture we grew up in and that culture is shaped and defined by its art. 

What name brand or look represents you? Do you identify with a particular flag? What color cancer ribbon represents your survival? These are all ways that we use art to define ourselves but, at all times, we are also allowing ourselves to be defined by those things.

So art is expression but, as such, it is also a form of manipulation. Art is used to shepherd and influence people in ways that they often don’t realize.