Being an art historian, I’m rarely asked to explain why art is important. Yet with the humanities being cut across the country, art professionals need to do this to enforce the need for art in education and to make art more relevant.
So here’s a list of twelve reasons why you should care about art...
Please send questions, comments and suggestions to me at http://www.matthewisrael.com/contact/
2. Being an art historian, I’m rarely asked to explain
why art is important.
!
Yet with the humanities being cut across the
country, art professionals need to do this to enforce
the need for art in education and to make art more
relevant.
!
So here’s a list of twelve reasons why you should
care about art.
!
Thanks for taking the time to read this; feel free to
share this; and send me your suggestions.
3. #1
!
Art is a language of visual images that everyone must learn to read,
since increasingly, images affect so many aspects of our lives. In this
way, and in the words of the National Art Education Association,
“complete literacy includes the ability to understand, respond to,
and talk about visual images.”
4. #2
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Galleries and museums—some of the most beautiful buildings in
our cities and towns—make amazing dating spots. (Check out The
Getty Center, for example.)
6. #4
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Art allows us to stop and appreciate what we miss in our very
busy daily lives.
7. #5
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“Contemporary art has become a kind of alternative religion for
atheists...For many art world insiders and art aficionados of other
kinds, concept-driven art is a kind of existential channel through
which they bring meaning to their lives. It demands leaps of faith,
but it rewards the believer with a sense of consequence. Moreover,
just as churches and other ritualistic meeting places serve a social
function, so art events generate a sense of community around
shared interests.”
!
-Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World
8. #6
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“We have art in order not to die of the truth.”
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-Friedrich Nietzsche
9. #7
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The art world is recently (and has been at many times in the past)
attractive to musicians. So if you like music, this might be a way to
get engaged with art.
10. #8
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“It makes the absent present, but it also, after many centuries,
makes the dead almost alive.”
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-Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting
11. #9
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If we need to calm down, art—such as seascapes by Hiroshi
Sugimoto—can settle us down. If we want to get excited, art—
such as Tino Sehgal’s “This Variation”—can do that too.
12. #10
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“People cannot, of course, see or touch history's vanished human
events. But a visible and tangible artwork is a kind of persisting
event. One or more artists made it at a certain time and in a
specific place, even if no one now knows just who, when, where, or
why. Although created in the past, an artwork continues to exist in
the present, long surviving its times. The first painters and
sculptors died 30,000 years ago, but their works remain, some of
them exhibited in glass cases in museums built only a few years
ago.”
!
-Gardner's Art through the Ages: A Global History
14. #12
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Art reminds us that there are many things in the world which don’t
make sense. The Cubist painter Georges Braque once said, “In
Art there is only one thing that counts; the thing you can’t
explain.”
17. A few related links:
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National Art Educators Association
The Getty Center
Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World
Jay Z at Pace Gallery
Leon Battista Alberti, On Painting
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lake Superior, Point Isabelle, 2003
Article on Tino Sehgal's "This Variation"
Gardner's Art Through the Ages: Global Edition