Arts and the appreciation of the Arts can improve the quality of life?
Arts have an important place in modern society; in fact, these have had a great influence on his existence right from the dawn of civilization. While man generally concerns himself with the bare necessities for survival, he has never considered the mere continuation of existence a sufficient goal. Man is in part a creature who thinks and decides, but he is perhaps primarily a being with feeling, with a wide range of responses. His emotional reactions and feelings need to be cultivated and refined along with his thoughts, if he is to become mature. These reactions and feelings belong to the realm of aesthetic experience. It is man’s aesthetic sense that enables him to make judgements, favourable or unfavourable, on artistic works, that is, on what he hears, sees, and reads. Aesthetics holds surprises and insights for the inquiring mind. Beauty in some form is recognised by men everywhere.
How are aesthetic experience, beauty, and the arts related? Aesthetic experiences are basic and fundamental to art, and that which does not have aesthetic value cannot be termed art. That is to say, the arts express beauty which is satisfying to our senses. In much contemporary as well as traditional aesthetic theory, art is what is beautiful, and what is not beautiful is not art.
Definitions of beauty are many and varied. It has been defined as ‘truth’, ‘the expression of an ideal’, ‘harmony in diversity’, and ‘an intrinsic quality of things themselves’. The modem trend in the interpretation of art, however, is not in full agreement with the traditional identification of art exclusively with beauty. If an artist is endeavouring to give certain experiential qualities in an artistic form, then he must be free to express the ugly as well as the beautiful.
According to modern interpretation, the artist portrays things as he ‘sees’ them, and so in many instances he must express the misery and the injustice, the ugliness and brutality, which are part of his vision of life. Some works of art are not beautiful, and some beautiful things like landscapes are not works of art. The possession of beauty, however, may be taken as the criterion of art that is likely to continue to appeal to man.
The purpose of art, all agree, is to bring immediate pleasure and satisfaction by revealing certain experiential elements of reality; it can also fortify us in various ways to meet the practical demands of life. Aesthetic response to music, for example, may be therapeutic. It may stimulate or soothe us; it may change the rate of the heartbeat, ease digestion, or affect other bodily processes. Aesthetic experience may help renew our spirits, exciting us and giving us courage and enthusiasm for some strenuous task. The power of aesthetic experience in its different forms to create various moods, from patience to a spirit of sacrifice, is well known.
Aesthetic experience and response may help create a social bond between diverse individuals and groups by arousing sympathy, developing understanding, and producing a desire for harmonious relationships. The presence of beauty, whether in nature or in art objects, tends to make our lives qualitatively richer.
Plato says that even ordinary human beings, if they are amid masterpieces of painting, sculpture, architecture, and so on, will be ennobled thereby. If artists are gifted to discern and disclose the nature of the beautiful and graceful, “then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds, and receive the good in everything, and beauty … shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giving breeze.” The young will imbibe a taste for beauty and decency and this will affect their entire lives. Hunter Mead, while discussing the nature of aesthetic mood or attitude, mentions three characteristics of the aesthetic attitude. ‘There is, first, the aspect of detachment; in this a person is released from the practical concerns of everyday living. A second characteristic is a disinterested and non-possessive aspect. “To appreciate without the itch to acquire, to love without longing to possess, to contemplate with joy and satisfaction but without thought of social advantage … : this is to achieve the disinterested attitude which is fundamental to the aesthetic mood.” The third aspect is impersonal, and involves “the temporary elimination of certain expressions of the personality.” One is absorbed by the aesthetic object; in a sense one gets “outside himself”, transcends his narrow interests and acquires a new perspective. This mood carries detachment and disinterestedness a stage further.
Arts and the appreciation of them have a civilizing function. This is the reason why we regard arts as an integral part of life; arts cannot be separated from the daily activities of men and women. Arts certainly enrich our lives.
