Necessity

A few weeks ago, I was waiting in a very, very long line.  As often happens when one is waiting, I started talking with the person in front of me.  The usual college introductions came up:  what’s your name, where are you from, what are you majoring in, etc.  When my reply to the last question was “illustration,” she gave the usual response.  She smiled and told me, “Oh, that sounds fun.”

While art is something that I enjoy, I sometimes get tired of people looking at art as the “fun” majors.  It often seems as if people just brush art majors to the side as the ones that just get to doodle for the whole class.  Many artists even tell of people asking them, “When are you going to get a real job?”

What people don’t realize is that art is everywhere, and that it is necessary.  People did art even before the first civilization.  When civilization did begin, art was incredibly important.  In fact, most of what we know of many ancient cultures comes from the art that they left behind.  Even today, we need it more than we realize.  In a speech to the Boston Conservatory, Karl Paulnack told a story about the concentration camps in Nazi Germany.  He says that the people there had “barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture.”  Despite all of that, they still made art.  Even those who were deprived of the basic needs of survival felt the urge to create music, poetry, and visual arts.

So is art fun? Yes.  Trivial? No.  Unimportant?  Definitely not.