In our past, present and future society
For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to art and beauty, aesthetic eye-candy of any sort. My mom would tell me that I had an eye for choosing the right outfits. I remember, in third grade, one of my classic looks was black yoga pants matched with a white long sleeve top and a pendant. Over the years my love for aesthetics has flourished into enjoying art. I remember wanting to stay inside to draw instead of going out to recess. I remember the chills I would feel hearing the harmony of a choir. I remember the fascination I felt seeing art on Pinterest. As I’ve grown up, this affinity for beauty has stuck and has become part of who I am. During long periods of free time like summer break, I have always felt as if the paint, the paintbrushes, and pencils are alive, tugging me back to them. It was not until recently that I really began to question why I am drawn to these sorts of things and what it all means.
For example, why am I so mad at someone for placing a pack of ketchup on a beautifully arranged dinner table? Why does a good outfit mean so much more to me than just clothes? I have always felt a larger than life connection to beauty and art. I’ve only recently started developing ideas and thinking about scientific explanations to explain this pull. Most importantly, I felt the need to write and reflect on this because I think it is so common to see art as expendable and shallow but the more I think about it, the more I feel as though there is a deep, biological reason as to why art is integral to society.
In the field of cognitive science, there’s the theory of enactivism, which is the idea that living organisms are governed by their environment and continued existence, or autopoiesis. The latter means that human cognition is derived from a creature’s need for reproduction and the self-maintenance and self-sustenance that ensure that. In this view, the very act of living constantly counteracts the possibility for destruction and chaos. This theory, I guess, is what made me think of the first reason that we are drawn to art and beauty. I think enactivism tells us that there is a biological reason as to why we are drawn to beauty and art. Beauty and art are the direct opposites of death because they require so much energy, effort and attention to be created. There’s a saying that goes “art is the antidote to death,” and American visual artist Sherry Rabinowitz writes that “artists need to create on the same scale that society has the capacity to destroy.” I think this means that, because we autopoetic creatures innately want to avoid death, we are attracted to the light, that being art, beauty, etc. I want to highlight that, in all of this, there seems to be an indication that beauty is not surface-level but deeply and biologically rooted in our need for survival.
The second reason that art goes so much deeper than just its surface has to do with the fact that it acts as a connection to a higher source. This idea is well articulated in The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, where she writes “And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?” The novel continues, “It’s not about outward appearances but inward significance. A grandeur in the world but not of the world, a grandeur that the world doesn’t understand. That first glimpse of pure otherness, in whose presence you bloom out and out and out.” I find these passages so interesting because they articulate the way that art is not just art, but a vehicle connecting us to something bigger. Tartt writes, “The painting was the secret that raised me above the surface of life and enabled me to know who I am. And it’s there: in my notebooks, every page, even though it’s not. Dream and magic, magic and delirium. The unified field theory. A secret about a secret.” This was an important book for me because it made the gears in my head start turning and really think about what art means to me and question our affinity towards it. Prior to reading this book, I had never heard the significance of art articulated. My biggest takeaway from what Tartt writes is that art and beauty act as a portal for connection to source.
Across vastly different time periods and cultures, we see art playing a common, recurrent theme in society. For example, the Medieval Dark Ages ended with sparks of re-inspiration to push the limits of human knowledge and innovation. And, along with this, a big part of the Renaissance was the rebirth of art—the Sistine Chapel ceilings, the Vitruvian man, and the Mona Lisa all being created as a result of Renaissance man Michelangelo’s dedication to pushing the limits. I think that a big part of this pursuit for more knowledge, innovation, etc. was a belief in something larger, that people could evolve to be better. In the same way, I think that art acts as a physical symbol that stands for some higher power. The beauty in the art is that it is a connection to this source of energy. I guess some people may call this source God but really what it boils down to is, I think, that beauty acts as energy which is magnetic to us autopoetic creatures and is what keeps us coming back to art. We face the ever-looming threats of a climate crisis and artificial intelligence to our future society, and while art may not provide direct answers, it may act as a unifying tool to ground society when facing these impending problems.
