Brief Moment

Why Art Works

If art is as inessential as the educational system treats it, then why has it lasted since the beginning of human time. After centuries of histories rewritten, theories of science overturned for new ones, celebrities shed as quickly as dead skin, art survives intact. No one corrects Rembrandt. Look into the face in one of his portraits and timeless humanity looks back. Looking at contemporary faces by Jenny Saville or Dara Engler and see the pain of our times, equally true, but sad in what they reflect about modern values and the anxieties of living today. As the philosopher Susanne Langer emphasized in all of her books, the arts are the best reflection of what’s true about human psychology. As she put it. “Art looks like feelings feel.” The art a person is drawn to is a reflection of their feelings, the ones they recognize from their own lives. This is an avenue of self-knowledge in the murky realms below conscious attention, the areas of human psyche that need morelight and clarity to avoid the sophisticated manipulation of perception managers that take advantage of what fears and desires lurk beneath the surface. Art takes you to the center of being human and if looking at it was part of a person’s self-care, an avenue to the bigger self is opened. Beyond the preoccupations of the mainstream surface, there is more to reflect on in the meaning an image has for an individual. Art stirs the mind with thoughts and memories connected to those feelings developing the intuitive understanding of emotions. At a time when emotional intelligence is prized, even in business, looking at art can be a first step to the self-understanding necessary to understanding others. Finding one artist that shows what you need to see is a bridge to a world of depth today’s marketing values eclipse. It’s not so much what art is but how. How balanced, how energetic, how intense. We feel these first as our bodies adjust to the requirements of the surroundings and apply them to the subject, giving it a mood or attitude. This universal sense of relationship to where we are, educated from birth, is free of the hazards of language. Near and far are positions in space that everyone understands in order to navigate. Visual form of any kind works the same way. Decoding the feeling of abstract space starts with which mechanism is responding. The body responds to the balance of the surroundings and its relationship with surrounding forms. If there is something like a figure, then automatic mirror responses to body language are active. If there something that could be read as a face, the part that understands facial expression adds information that hints at how the other is feeling. Whatever the feeling, it triggers associations with one’s own experience of that feeling. Brain systems that usually work separately, one which processes outer signals, the other involved in the inner world, are both active at once. Not only is the stimulation good for the brain, the intertwining of outer and inner strengthens their link. In a time when what to value has been eroded by modern culture, spending time with art can fortify our common humanity. Strengthening visual intelligence could help us see a bigger picture with broader implications and locate the problems hidden beneath the clutter of speech.