Essay on art: what is it and what role can it play in people’s lives? Essay on art with examples.Art is one of those things that , even if we know what it is, we would not be able to define exactly if someone asked us. It is not difficult to give examples of works of art: Guernica , Mozart ‘s Requiem , Hamlet,Michelangelo ‘s Prisoners ; or examples of arts, such as dramatic art , music or the figurative arts . And yet, what exactly is art ?
Most people would say that Dante’s Comedy is a work of art, while an article about melting glaciers published in a newspaper is not. But both are written texts. What’s the difference? What makes the Comedy a work of art? The drawing I made this morning while talking on the phone is not an artistic artifact, it’s a scribble. Why? And what about the piece composed by the young musician who lives next door to me? Is it a work of art? Maybe not. When and how will her pieces be recognized as such? When will they be famous and reproduced by others? Is it fame that makes art? Is it economic value? Or the particular type of experience lived by the artists and those who frequent their work?
Those we consider great artists of antiquity today, such as Phidias, the Greek sculptor, were not considered such by their contemporaries. Or at least, not in the same way that we consider Bertolt Brecht and Maria Callas to be artists . In the Middle Ages , the “ liberal arts ” were grammar, rhetoric and dialectics (the Trivium), arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy ( the Quadrivium), taught at the University in the Faculty of Arts. Who would say that arithmetic is an art anymore? We use to say “You are an artist!”, addressing someone who knows how to do something well or in an original way, or someone who does something beautiful. We understand art as an expression of creativity or genius, but this has not always been the case.
The discussion about what is art and what is not has a long history and is not over yet. We can even imagine that it will never end. For the moment, therefore, I propose to leave it aside. Let us instead dedicate ourselves to discussing the role of art in people’s lives, in everyday life. To do this, a precise definition of art is not necessary, we can simply take for granted that vague idea of art from which I started and refer to what we would all undoubtedly say is art.
Art in everyday life
Art can be an integral part of our lives, in different ways. There are those who learn to play an instrument, to reproduce the pieces of music they love or to play with friends. There are those who sing, even in a non – professional way. There are those who sign up for a drawing course, those who love to go and see the works of art kept in the museums of their city.
There are those who are passionate about cinema or theater, those who read a lot (or a little, but still enjoy it). Some paint the walls of their city, others love to go dancing and know the most diverse types of dance. There are those who write stories, or a diary, and those who read comics.
In each person’s life, these artistic practices can play an important, even decisive, and sometimes unexpected role. Does this perhaps mean that “we are all a little bit artists”? I don’t know, but it is certainly true that art, in the most diverse forms, can be an integral part of life.
Primo Levi and the Canto of Ulysses
A good example to explain what I mean are the pages of If This Is a Man dedicated to the Canto di Ulisse. Primo Levi is in the Lager, in an unusual moment of “freedom”. He has to walk a kilometer with Jean, to go to the kitchens to get the rations. Jean would like to learn Italian: «I would be happy to teach him Italian: can’t we do it? We can. Even right away, one thing is as good as another, the important thing is not to waste time, not to waste this hour».
Levi recounts the moment when the Canto di Ulisse suddenly came to mind, the sense of necessity and the haste with which he recited it to Jean, stopping to try to translate it into French, to explain it, or because he no longer remembered some tercets. The urgency and presence of the verses in that moment are such that Levi can write “I would give today’s soup to remember the verse that escapes me”! And we can imagine what it meant in the Lager to give up a bowl of soup.
In reciting Dante’s verses, Levi does not show off his erudition, nor does he limit himself to teaching Jean a few words of Italian, nor does he merely find comfort in poetry. During that short walk, Dante’s verses take on a new life, take on a meaning they did not have before. Levi knows them by heart, it is likely that he had read, reread and ruminated on them over the years. But in that moment something new happens. Not only in the sense that he understands something in those verses that he had never grasped before. There is also this, but there is much more.
It is not just a new interpretation, a different understanding of the text. It is the absolute relevance of Dante’s verse to Levi’s life (“I had to come to the Lager to realize”). It is as if Primo Levi were rewriting the Divine Comedy . At that moment, the verses are his, they are new. He is the artist. Therefore he writes:
I’m in a hurry, a furious hurry. Here, be careful Pikolo, open your eyes and your mind, I need you to understand:
Consider your lineage:
You were not made to live like brutes,
But to follow virtue and knowledge.
As if I too were hearing it for the first time: like a trumpet blast, like the voice of God. For a moment I forgot who I am and where I am.”
In the Letter to Francesco Vettori , Machiavelli writes the same thing: «for four hours I do not feel any boredom, I forget every worry, I do not fear poverty, I am not frightened by death: I transfer everything into them». Of course, the two situations are incomparable. Machiavelli was safe, sitting in his desk, Levi was in the Lager. Machiavelli tells of a daily practice, Levi describes a sudden urgency. And yet, the two experiences are similar: by reading, repeating, imagining a work of art that we know and have made our own, we are artists («I transfer everything into them»).
This happens only with works of art that concern us, regardless of their genre, be it literature, music, poetry or any other. Levi describes this experience exactly:
“Pikolo asks me to repeat. How good Pikolo is, he has realized that he is doing me good. Or maybe it is something more: maybe, despite the dull translation and the pedestrian and hasty commentary, he has received the message, he has felt that it concerns him, that it concerns all men in labor, and us in particular.”
The entire passage from Machiavelli is this: “When evening comes, I return home and enter my study; and at the door I take off my everyday clothes, full of mud and dirt, and put on royal and courtly clothes; and dressed appropriately, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received lovingly by them, I feed on that food which is only mine and which I was born for; where I am not ashamed to speak to them and ask them the reason for their actions; and they, out of their humanity, answer me; and for four hours I do not feel any boredom, I forget every worry, I do not fear poverty, I am not frightened by death: I transfer myself entirely to them” (Letter to Francesco Vettori).
