Is Art an Extra?
by Karen Edmisten in Family on Friday, February 18, 2011 6:00 AM
Recently our family visited a local art museum. We wound our way around Van Gogh, roamed past Renoir, ambled by Bouguereau and Breton, and soaked up Sargent. Lost in our impressions of the Impressionists, I hadn’t even thought that our museum stroll could “count” as art class (in our homeschool).
It was apparently “counted” by teachers from brick-and-mortar schools, too, as I noticed a number of students on a field trip. We – homeschoolers and school-schoolers alike – had all made time for the sublime that morning.
Are such outings an escape from school, or an integral part of it? Are the arts an extra? Heaven forbid.
Exposure to the arts is as valuable as memorizing times tables and studying the details of mitosis. And while not every family that presumes the importance of art will produce a composer, a painter, or a poet, when I hear news detailing financial cuts to the arts in schools, I shudder. Education is more than prepping for a college entrance exam. Granted, there are limited hours in a day, and whether we home-educate or send our kids to school, it can be easy to overlook the finer things. But education is too often reduced to utilitarianism.
We find ourselves focusing only on how our kids will do on the SAT. Do we think as much about how they’ll “do” at the museum? Or when they’re discussing literature? Or listening to Bach?
It’s not only academic pressure that can usurp the place of artistic extras. On a spiritual level, it can be tempting for a Christian to view the arts as superfluous. What difference does it make that a Dutchman once painted a few sunflowers when people are starving and there are souls to be won for Christ?
Beauty, which God invented, does make a difference.
Think about the last time you were touched by art. Last Christmas, we attended my daughters’ music recital. After the students strained through piano, violin and cello pieces, the teacher (who plays professionally) and her friend offered a short concert. A number of families, understandably tired at the end of a long evening, left before these pros began to play.
I admit that I was also exhausted. It occurred to me that we could slip out unnoticed, but we didn’t want to be rude. We stayed and were enormously grateful for the treat. The music was lively, gorgeous, stirring, thrilling and sad.
How easy to forget what a profoundly different experience it is to be in the organic presence of live music, as opposed to pushing a button for iTunes. As my eight-year-old recently tried to articulate, “Mommy, music just ... it just does something to you. It can make you feel happy or sad or ... oh, all kinds of things!”
She didn’t know it, but she was paraphrasing the English critic Walter Pater, who said, “All art aspires to the condition of music.”
But back to the question of whether such aspirations are necessary for a Christian. The Catechism of the Catholic Church helps us understand (CCC 2501):
... Arising from talent given by the Creator and from man’s own effort, art is a form of practical wisdom, uniting knowledge and skill, to give form to the truth of reality in a language accessible to sight or hearing. To the extent that it is inspired by truth and love of beings, art bears a certain likeness to God’s activity in what he has created.
Art offers us a mirror trained on the truth, goodness and beauty of God’s creation. It is as vital a part of our children’s catechesis as is learning the ten commandments and living the beatitudes. God, the author of all that is true, good and beautiful, offers a pathway to Him in the allure of artistic endeavors.
And while it’s true that in both education and the spiritual life we must fit in all the practicalities, it’s equally important to carve out time for that which is not necessary for our physical survival, but is needed for our souls to thrive.
And so it is with the workman of Art ... To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile ... And when it is accomplished behold! all the truth of life is there: a moment of vision ... and the return to an eternal rest.—Joseph Conrad
***
“All the truth of life is there.” It’s not an extra. It’s a core curriculum for all of us.
— Karen Edmisten is author of The Rosary: Keeping Company with Jesus and Mary. Read her blog at KarenEdmisten.Blogspot.com.
*** Thanks to Debra Murphy of Quotes for Catholic Writers for the Conrad quote.
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