If Art is Useless, Why Can't we Live Without it?

Down Town Salt Lake City

Oscar Wilde said, "all art is quite useless" and at the risk of sounding controversial, I'm going to agree with Wilde. Look, the masterpiece in your living room isn't going to feed you, or help you fix a broken faucet. Your favorite song on the radio isn't going to help you budget your money, or tell you what to make for dinner. Most artists themselves will tell you that their art alone doesn't usually pay the bills. So why do we feel like it's such an important part of our lives? Why do we continue to paint or sketch? Why do we make time to go to the symphony, or ballet, or to the bar to watch our favorite local singer belt out Eagles cover songs for tips? Why do we continue to hold something so useless to such high esteem?

I ask people this question a lot and the best answer came from my hairdresser. "Art makes you feel stuff," she said.

My hairdresser's simple answer encompasses the essence of what it means to engage in art either as an appreciator, such as myself, or a practitioner such as the talented artists I've recently had the privilege of meeting. What sets humans apart from animals is our ability to express our feelings in a myriad of ways. Feeling makes us human, expressing those feelings and sharing in them with others, makes us a community.

Art has endured over billions of years because it fills one of our most basic needs. It's the need at the center of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, a sense of love and belonging. I look at a painting that's chaotic and mad, and I'm reminded that we all feel messy. I sing along with Journey, "don't stop believing" in my car and I feel a surge of happiness. I read a poem about lost love and I no longer feel so alone in my loneliness. I write a story and send it out into the world hoping someone connects with it because then I've helped someone else feel a human connection.

So yes, Oscar Wilde is right, on a practical level all art is useless. The arts won't sustain life, but they've sustained over the course of our lives because art is what makes our lives worth living.