The Power Of Art
What would we do without art? I don’t just mean traditional art like oil paintings or sculptures in galleries, but art as a whole. The arts! Concepts, stories and ideas that have been conceived from human imagination: literature, films, TV, theatre and of course, visual art.
We are bombarded with news (often gloomy), faced with sobering realities (the cost of living going up, paying the bills etc) and, for those of you that especially live in London and other big cities, lead very busy and stressful lives.
What can do to escape the stresses and strains of modern life and open our minds and souls to a more abstract reality? Well, art!
I (Danny) am currently in the middle of reading one of the latest Cormoran Strike novels by Robert Galbraith (shh, it’s JK Rowling!). And, despite finding little time to indulge in it, when I do, I am transported in to a world of flawed private detectives with their own very human problems, a riveting plot and some brilliant, larger than life characters.
I’m also loving the Alan Partridge podcast on Audible, From The Oast House, which is making me literally laugh out loud on the tube and when I walk our dog, Roxy!
As some of you know, I am also a DJ and listening to and discovering new music is a big passion of mine. I learn so much from all kinds of music too- jazz, rock, hip-hop, latin, disco, folk and more.
And I recently found the time to go and see the Marina Abramovich exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts which is displaying a retrospective of some of her most shocking, mind blowing and visceral performance art she’s done. I came out completely in awe of her and it opened my mind up to looking at the world in a way I never imagined before.
And that’s why it’s so important to us. We can’t answer the big questions to life by just experience or what a philosopher has said, but by other people’s experiences. Because only then can we see how much we’re all related to one another in all kinds of ways and how wonderful, insightful and enlightening other people’s stories and ideas are.
Art can entertain, frighten, shock, amuse, worry, alert, awaken, educate us and more and that’s important, isn’t it?
So, the answer to the question at the start- ‘what would we do without art?’ is- we wouldn’t think, feel or behave in any way similar as we do with art. And we wouldn’t understand the world we live in without it too. No way. How could we?
So, long live art!
