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A new book shows how sensory attention to art supports emotional regulation and social connection
The other day my friend Sofia came by with a box of pastries, a plant and a bunch of stories from her recent trip to Morocco where her mother and sisters live. I had a whole host of stories to share as well because I had just returned from India. Settling into an afternoon of food, laughter and conversation about our homes, art and the upcoming month of Ramadan, we only looked up when Sofia looked out of the window, and exclaimed, “It’s past Maghreb. I better get going.” I offered to walk her to the subway station to show her some public art installations in our neighbourhood. As we strolled along we came upon an arrangement of colourful twinkling lights, installed in a public plaza. “This reminds me of the decorations for Eid” or “Diwali” or “Christmas,” we went back and forth. “All someone had to do was order boxes of fairy lights from Amazon and display them.” “In a kind of pattern.” We looked at each other and asked, “Is this art?” And right there and then we were faced with age-old questions of art: when does something ordinary become art, and who decides?
One fine day sometime in early 1917, Marcel Duchamp, a French artist living in New York City walked over to a showroom for household fixtures and plumbing, looked around, settled on a plain looking porcelain urinal, brought it back to his studio, turned it on its side, signed a name that too not his own, and called it art. This is considered one of the most important and influential works of the twentieth Century in the West because it takes on important questions related to visual art – what is it? Who makes it? How is it made? This, Duchamp seems to say, this readymade thing that I, the artist choose to display with a signature, is art. The denizens of the western world of “fine arts” peg the urinal’s value at 3 million dollars today. This is not necessarily for its beauty but for the importance of the “idea” or “concept.” A whole new art movement, “conceptual art,” started at that urinal. Some are incredulous that it is even considered an art object. What then would they think about Piero Manzoni’s cans of Artist’s Shit? This shit produced by the Italian artist, all 90 cans of them was to be priced at the daily market price of Gold according to the artist’s specifications. But the art market went ahead and paid more!
These provocations force us to pause: is it the material, the maker, the market, or the meaning that grants an object its status as art?
H Kumar Vyas, who along with a visionary interdisciplinary group founded the National Institute of Design (NID) in India writes about arts and crafts as a unified concept. Art was primarily concerned with making images of the Hindu pantheon, the Gods and Goddesses. These included related ceremonial objects, pictorial work as well as the spaces needed for worship and ceremonies. Artist-Artisans created and embellished these objects and spaces. Vyas writes, “These were the masons, painters, illustrators, stone and clay workers, wood workers, and metalsmiths. Because the same artist-craftsman also created artefacts of everyday use for the householder, it is obvious that no separate terms were needed to distinguish the [plastic] arts from the crafts. In the minds of the creators and the people for whom these objects were created, art and craft remain one inseparable concept.”
In other words, art was not a category apart, but a way of being in the world ritual, integrated with everyday activities and into daily use. This seamlessness begins to explain why later separations between “fine art” and “folk art” feel artificial and strained.
Throughout history times the arts have been tied with rituals and ceremonies, indeed with health and wellbeing. The ancients conducted rituals to call on the Gods, sometimes to mark life passages, births, deaths, at other times to celebrate special events and especially in times of distress. The ritual ceremonies were artistic events that included images, hymns, movements…Researcher Daisy Fancourt writes that in the beginning when the arts were born, “It appears the arts were not separated into component parts but woven together in layers of combined artistic practice.” This is still true in many cultures around the world especially in what is termed “folk arts” and “crafts.”
This gap between lived creativity and institutional recognition grows sharper once we trace how “art” itself was redefined in modern times.
There is no one definition of art and beauty and there cannot be one because both are dependent on humans. Individuals artists and their audiences together decide what is art like Duchamp and the contemporary art world of galleries and their patrons did when they decided that a urinal is a sculpture.
The urge to create and to express ourselves in various ways through sounds, pictures, movements is innate. Music, dance, poetry, the artful display of vegetables in a cart, the creation of sound patterns…we humans are drawn to artful arrangements of various kinds. We are attracted to what we find beautiful. For some of us it could be the classical ragas, for others it could be Hindi film music of the 50’s, the sonorous voice of a playback singer heard over a crackly radio. Just like creative expression can take various forms so can beauty.
The longing to be part of something beyond, something unseen, something felt but not known is always present. This longing is what draws us to the arts and beauty. Protidhvoni Shuni, aami Protidhvoni Shuni. I hear the echo, go the lyrics of a famous song sung by Assamese singer, Bhupen Hazarika. Translating the poet Kabir, Tagore writes, “There are the hidden banner and the secret canopy: There the sound of the unseen bells is heard…Kabir says: ‘There have I witnessed the sport of One Bliss! The inward and outward are become as one sky.’” That place, that feeling, that sense that there is more to than just I as an individual is where the arts guide us. They bring us to a secret garden fragrant with blooms of bright colours. A delight!
That afternoon and then at the time of Maghreb when Sofia and I ended our visit, we had not made any art in the sense of creating an artwork, but we had experienced a sense of delight. We had enjoyed food seasoned with spices and delicately made pastries. We had connected over memories and stories of our families. In doing so we had connected with each other and brought our families into the circle we had created. We had savoured a slice of life together. That is a form of art.
Excerpted with permission from An Artwork a Day: The Arts in Health and Wellbeing, Krina Patel, The Arts Path.
Source: Scroll
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