Imagine a world in which people rise to labour in the fields or factories all day, and go home in the evening to sit over their plates of food, after which they sleep until the next day’s labour. Imagine that they do not read, or watch comedy or drama on television, or go to the theatre, or visit an exhibition of painting or sculpture, or listen to music.
Imagine that in their world there are no pictures – not even the advertisements are illustrated, but are all words, and very plain ones at that, with no playfulness or humour in them, no miniature narratives.
Imagine that the buildings are completely austere, without a single decorative feature anywhere. The towns consist entirely of plain buildings, of two kinds; places to eat and sleep, and places to work. None of the dwellings have pictures on the walls, of course, but neither do they have ornaments on the mantelpieces, and even the bedclothes are a plain functional colour.
Such a world is a world without art in any form. Imagining it immediately tells us of some of the purposes of art: to brighten and enliven our world, to decorate it, to provide it with grace notes, elegance, fun, colour, variety, to tell us stories and amuse and enlighten us, to bring us images and ideas of other places, other times, to make us see the familiar afresh, to educate our eyes with colourful shapes and our ears with varied sounds, and to expand our vision of the world as a whole, so that our lives are not confined to what is merely local and transient – to the here and now of any moment – but can range over great varieties of possibility in time, space and meaning.
Some of these things are important far beyond what they represent in the way of entertainment. Art can be challenging and disturbing too, and can jolt us out of preconceptions and prejudices. We can be made – ‘made’ is a word of enforcement – to see things in different and unexpected ways. We might not always like what art shows us or makes us think; it might be very far from being beautiful or enjoyable; but in stretching us, and introducing us to new perspectives, it can do us a profound service.
The arts – the plastic arts of painting, sculpture, ceramics, tapestry and the like; the performing arts of theatre, dance, music, and their combinations; and the literary arts – exist because human beings are essentially intelligent and social creatures. Many of the arts are forms of communication, in which responses to the world and commentary on the human condition are shared by makers and performers with their fellows, who constitute an audience, observing and responding in their turn and thus taking part in the conversation. Some of the arts are abstract and attract by their formal properties alone, or by the sheer inventiveness they display, these being attractive to the intelligence and interest in novelty that almost all people share.
Literature and theatre are good examples of how art answers very fundamental human needs. In this case the needs are – to put the matter at its most basic – gossip. Gossip is a human essential because it provides information about the nuances, difficulties and dimensions of human life. We all like a bit of gossip, and literature is (so to speak) organised gossip in its highest form: it consists in stories about people, what they get up to, what they feel, what happens to them – the very stuff, therefore, not just of gossip itself, but of soap operas, and of course even of the grandest literary works of the classical canon.
Another success story in art is painting. Most people love to look at pictures because we are visual animals, and pictures variously tell stories, or are beautiful, or at least interesting – and as abstract paintings show, pure shapes, or arrangements of materials, fascinate the eye too, and draw us to them. The activity of looking, observing, appreciating, is a refreshment in itself, and this is the most basic thing that happens when we wander round an exhibition or gallery.
What the arts do for us, in short, is to enhance and deepen our experience of our world, each other, and ourselves. If our interest is roused by something, if we become absorbed in a story, if we are shaken by a new and disturbing idea, if we are entertained, soothed, made to laugh, feel moved by beauty, feel an upsurge of sadness or wonder or poignancy in response to a piece of music, an image or a tale, then our own experience of living is enriched, and the world itself has more texture and meaning for us.
Without art, we would scarcely be ourselves: we would be living empty lives, unadorned by the works of our own intelligence and creativity, and desperately the poorer for it.
To ask what art is good for is not exactly the same as asking what its purpose is. Art does not have to have a purpose – it does not exist in order to do the things described above; it does not exist specifically and on purpose to teach, to urge a moral point, to entertain, to distract, to amuse, to promote beauty, to support a revolution, to disgust, to challenge, to stimulate or to cheer. These are the effects it can have, and typically does have; but even if these things are the intention of some – even many – of its makers, it cannot be a requirement of its existence that it exists in order to do these things. Principally, it exists for its own sake. It is the artist, not art as such, that might have an aim in mind, and his or her aim might be to do any of the things just listed. But equally, artists might just make art because they feel compelled to. Because the work is its own justification, no further aim or goal is necessarily required to explain or, still less, to justify its existence.
But to say that art does not have to serve an aim beyond itself, even though it might sometimes do so, is not to say that it is good for nothing. On the contrary, as one of the greatest goods of human experience, it is good for many things. The distinction here lies between things that are instrumental, and things that are ends in themselves. An instrument exists for something beyond itself, namely, for what it can be used to do. An end in itself is its own justification for existing. Even though art can sometimes be instrumental, that fact is not essential to its nature. What art is ‘good for’ arises from its being an end in itself, or more accurately: the embodiment of many different things that are valuable for their own sakes.
The word ‘art’ does duty here, as noted, for painting, sculpture, music, literature, dance and theatre performance, and whatever else (to quote Andy Warhol) anyone can get away with in calling it ‘art’. But the generalisation that art, whatever else it is, is always an end in itself, applies to them all. This can be shown as follows.
Art is one major form of response to the world. It is often an attempt to capture an aspect of the world, to draw attention to something about it, to comment on it, to present a surprising or fresh angle on it, to represent it for the sake of exploring something about it, or enjoying or celebrating it – for example, the colours or shapes of an object, its eccentricity or typicality, the interest or repugnance it provokes.
For a loose comparison, think of laughing at a joke. We do not laugh so that we can achieve a further goal – in order to be healthy or relaxed, say, even if we thereby succeed in being healthier or more relaxed – but simply because the joke has elicited that reaction. But though it is merely a reaction, laughing is in fact good for something nevertheless; it does make people feel better. Art is a reaction in the same way. Cézanne painted Mont Sainte-Victoire repeatedly because he was fascinated by it, not because he thought that painting it would say something about politics or society or human hopes. Being fascinated by something, attracted to it, repelled by it, keen to reveal an unusual aspect of it, are all responses to that thing; the making of art is one outstanding way of expressing such responses.
But art is a response not only to things in the world, but to experience of the world, which lies inside the artist himself or herself. And it is also often an expression of what presses from within the artist without being elicited by externals. Music is a prime example. A symphony, unless it has a programme and is devised to represent bird song, rain, battle and the like, is an abstract expression of a composer’s conception. The impulse to make art, as with poetry, can result in the artist imparting a message, but the art lies not in the message but the way it is conveyed. An interest in materials and techniques without any explicit content, as in abstract painting or contemporary dance, leads to a form of distinctively modern art that switches the focus of attention, as when people look at a frame rather than the picture within. It is still art, still an expression of a response to something within or without.
When artists get to work responding and expressing, whether or not also to urge a point, entertain, distract, support a revolution and the rest, they are producing something that someone else will react to in some way; and that is what art is chiefly good for: namely, that by its relationship with its audience it can make something move in the realm of thought and emotion, where such movement is life.