Art best portrays the change we desire, let’s all embrace it

 

For decades, Western culture has been reluctant to assign an inherent value or purpose to art, even as it continues to hold works of art in high esteem.

Art can be broadly categorised as literature (including poetry, drama, story, and so on); visual arts such as painting, drawing, sculpture; and graphic arts — painting, drawing, design, and other forms expressed on flat surfaces.

Though we no longer seem comfortable saying so, our reverence for art must be founded on a timeless premise; that art is good for us. If we didn’t believe this, then our commitment — in money, time, and study — makes little or no sense. In what way might art be good for us?

The answer, I believe, is that art is a therapeutic instrument. Its value lies in its capacity to exhort, console, and guide us toward better versions of ourselves.

Literature, visuals and graphics help us live more flourishing lives, individually and collectively. Resistance to such a notion is understandable today, since “therapy” has become associated with questionable, or at least unavailing, methods of improving mental health.

Therapeutic

To say that art is therapeutic is not to suggest that it shares therapy’s methods but rather its underlying ambition; to help us cope better with existence.

While several predominant ways of thinking about art appear to ignore or reject this goal, their ultimate claim is therapeutic as well.

Art’s capacity to shock remains, for some, a strong source of its contemporary appeal.

We are conscious that, individually and collectively, we may grow complacent and art can be valuable when it disrupts or astonishes us. We are particularly in danger of forgetting the artificiality of certain norms.

It’s easy now to see that those arrangements were far from inevitable; they were open to change and improvement.

It is the reason my team and I at Mizizi Studios in Kitui are working hard to portray the world through art.  We invite you to join or support us and our cause. Long live art.    BY DAILY NATION