The Big Ideas: Why Does Art Matter?

This essay is part of The Big Ideas, a special section of The Times’s philosophy series, The Stone, in which more than a dozen artists, writers and thinkers answer the question, “Why does art matter?”

An artist spraying paint on a sculpture of the Hindu goddess Durga in Lalitpur, Nepal, last year. Credit Monika Deupala/Reuters

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As an artist, I am a creator, though referring to myself that way makes me somewhat uncomfortable. For most of my life, the word “creator” has meant the Creator of all things, especially in the native tradition, and I would not by any means compare my meager efforts at creation to Creation.

But art is truly an act of creation. And creation is an act of art.

When we create art, it’s a product of three components: the mind, the heart and our past experiences. As an actor, sculptor and author, I have found that this interconnectedness is a large part of why art matters.…  Seguir leyendo »

Carrie Mae Weems, Scenes & Takes. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY

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Art matters because artists matter.

For years I used to get up early and walk to the corner store to grab my weekend fix: a Sunday edition of The New York Times. (My Sundays today still include The Times, albeit the one on my iPad.) It’s the best newspaper in the nation, and I loved it even during those long stretches when I don’t remember seeing a single story on black or brown artists for weeks on end. There was nothing in the Arts section, nothing in dance, nothing in film, nothing in the Book Review and, astonishingly, very little in music.…  Seguir leyendo »

Lady Gaga wore Iris van Herpen’s “Hydrozoa dress” as part of the album artwork for “Chromatica”. Credit Norbert Schoerner

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Iris van Herpen and Damien Jalet are known for pushing boundaries in their respective fields. Ms. van Herpen, a Dutch fashion designer, fuses traditional craftsmanship with modern technology to create sculptural forms. She has dressed Beyoncé, Björk and other performers, and has designed costumes for the Paris Opera and the New York City Ballet. Mr. Jalet, a Belgian-French choreographer, often experiments with perspectives and blends visual art into his presentations. He has collaborated with Thom Yorke, Madonna, Paul Thomas Anderson and many others.

In early May, we asked Ms. van Herpen and Mr. Jalet to discuss the creative process, the importance of originality and why art matters in our modern times.…  Seguir leyendo »

The painter Salman Toor in his Brooklyn studio. Credit Peter Fisher for The New York Times

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The word “art” can seem pretentious: When people hear it, they worry someone will force them to read a novel, or go to a museum, or see a movie without any explosions in it.

To me, art simply refers to those aspects of our lives that can be suffused and transformed by creativity. And having creativity in our lives is important. Without it we’re just going through the motions, stuck in the past. With it we feel alive, even joyous.

But if I say that art is simply life imbued with creativity, isn’t that just a case of obscurum per obscurius — of explaining the murky with the even murkier?…  Seguir leyendo »

"Duelos", una videoinstalación dirigida por Clemencia Echeverri, se proyectó en la instalación de “Fragmentos”, de Doris Salcedo. Credit Nadège Mazars para The New York Times

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Soy una artista política que trabaja en medio de la crisis. He producido la mayor parte de mi trabajo en Colombia, un país que intenta finalizar una guerra de más de cincuenta años. En 2016, el gobierno y las guerrillas de las Farc firmaron un acuerdo de paz. Pero todavía tenemos que ponerle fin al brutal conflicto armado que ha cobrado más de nueve millones de víctimas, entre los asesinatos, las desapariciones, la violencia sexual y el desplazamiento forzado. En la actualidad, Colombia es aún uno de los muchos epicentros de catástrofe, uno de los muchos lugares donde la tragedia parece ser un evento continuo.…  Seguir leyendo »

Ai-Da, a humanoid robot, and Aidan Meller, her inventor, present an oil painting in Oxford, England, created by artists based on a sketch by the robot. Credit Niklas Halle'n/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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Many artists are turned off by artificial intelligence. They may be discouraged by fears that A.I., with its efficiency, will take away people’s jobs. They may question the ability of machines to be creative. Or they may have a desire to explore A.I.’s uses — but aren’t able to decrypt its terminology.

This all reminds me of when people were similarly skeptical of another technology: the camera. In the 19th century, with the advent of modern photography, cameras introduced both challenges and benefits. While some artists embraced the technology, others saw cameras as alien devices that required expertise to operate. Some felt this posed a threat to their jobs.…  Seguir leyendo »

A detail from Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party” at the Brooklyn Museum. The installation is a symbolic history of women in Western civilization. Credit Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

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Since I wrote the first draft of this essay in early March, the world has turned upside down. I have revised the original text, guided by a single question: Does art matter when we are facing a global crisis such as the current Covid-19 pandemic?

Obviously, there is a great deal of art that doesn’t matter. This includes the work issuing from those university art programs that every year pump out thousands of graduates, taught only to speak in tongues about formal, conceptual and theoretical issues few people care about or can comprehend. Then there is the art created for a global market that has convinced too many people that a piece’s selling price is more important than the content it conveys.…  Seguir leyendo »

Members of the activist group Red Rebel Brigade inside the British Museum in London on Feb. 8, demonstrating against the institution’s sponsorship by the oil company BP. Credit Simon Dawson/Reuters

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In February, a group of activists smuggled a 13-foot-tall wooden horse inside the British Museum in London. The morning after they were joined by around a thousand people, who gathered inside the building to protest the oil company BP’s sponsorship of an exhibition devoted to the ancient city of Troy. In New York, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the New Museum have all seen protests over their links to issues like the oil and arms trade, gentrification and colonialism. In some cases, trustees have had to leave museum boards in response to the public outrage.…  Seguir leyendo »

Doris Salcedo’s “Shibboleth,” a temporary installation in the form of a crack running through the floor of the Tate Modern museum in central London in 2007. It represented segregation and racial hatred directed at immigrants and migrants. Credit Edmond Terakopian/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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I am a political artist who works in the midst of crisis. I have produced most of my work in Colombia, a country trying to end a 50-year war. In 2016, the government and the FARC guerrillas signed a peace accord. But we have yet to put an end to the brutal armed conflict, which has claimed more than nine million victims through death, disappearances, sexual violence and forceful displacement. Colombia continues to be one of many epicenters of catastrophe today — one of many places where tragedy seems to be a single continuous event.

I believe it is precisely in times of crisis that art achieves its most profound meaning.…  Seguir leyendo »

The streaming service Netflix erected signs around Los Angeles last year to promote “Roma,” which was nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including best picture. Hunter Kerhart for The New York Times

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I never thought that a movie alone could prompt social awareness and change. But when the director Alfonso Cuarón released his film “Roma” in 2018, with me in the lead role, that’s exactly what happened. Suddenly people in my home country of Mexico were talking about issues that have long been taboo here — racism, discrimination toward Indigenous communities and especially the rights of domestic workers, a group that has been historically disenfranchised in Mexican society.

In fact, it was my involvement in this film that led me to better appreciate the importance of art.

Art sheds light on the urgent, necessary and at times painful issues that are not always easy to approach because we as a society have not been able to figure them out.…  Seguir leyendo »

Un anuncio de la película “Roma”, protagonizada por la autora. Credit Hunter Kerhart para The New York Times

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Nunca creí que una película pudiera abrir un debate sobre temas que por mucho tiempo han sido un tabú en mi país, México. Pero cuando en 2018 se estrenó Roma, el filme que protagonicé con la dirección de Alfonso Cuarón, noté un cambio. De pronto comenzaron a escucharse conversaciones sobre el racismo, se empezó a hablar de la discriminación a nuestras comunidades indígenas y a discutir la labor de las trabajadoras del hogar, por demasiado tiempo desprotegidas y sin los derechos laborales más básicos.

Ser parte de esa película me ayudó a entender lo importante que es el arte.

¿Por qué importa el arte?…  Seguir leyendo »

A museumgoer contemplates "​Las Meninas​," by Diego Velázquez, at the Prado in Madrid. Credit Emilio Parra Doiztua for The New York Times

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When I agreed to write this essay, little did I know that when I finally sat down to tackle it all my favorite museums would be closed to the public, along with every library, theater, concert hall and movie house and, of course, the galleries I own. It’s a bit like our world faded abruptly and unexpectedly from vivid color to black and white.

But it dawned on me that there could hardly be a better moment to reflect upon the importance of art — or, better still, culture itself — than in the face of its almost complete physical absence.…  Seguir leyendo »

Cate Blanchett appears in Julian Rosefeldt’s film installation “Manifesto” at the Park Avenue Armory in 2016 in New York City. Credit Michael Nagle for The New York Times

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I was home schooling my 5-year-old daughter almost two weeks into our Covid-19-induced lockdown when our pug, Doug, suddenly began chasing his tail. “He’s bonkers,” I said.

“What does bonkers mean?” my daughter asked without looking up from her coloring. “Mad,” I said. “Mad,” she repeated to the half-finished mermaid in front of her.

Then she asked: “What does mad mean?” “Mad means you don’t make sense to anyone but yourself,” I replied. I had hurried past the word’s countless implications in the grown-up world, but she seemed to understand how it applied to our pug, locked in his own paranoid tail-chasing.…  Seguir leyendo »

Visitors contemplate Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night" at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. Credit Jeenah Moon for The New York Times

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The torrential rains at the summer resort in the Catskills, where my dad was a weekend bass player, entitling us to the use of a free if leaky bungalow, drove all us campers into the cavernous dance hall for an impromptu game of trivia. I was 5 years old, and the first up. “Where are you from?” the head counselor asked when I had climbed onto the stage.

I was so intently focused on my private, newfound passion that I hardly registered the question. “Math!” I answered, only to be baffled when everyone around me erupted in laughter.

Mathematics is a universal language of pattern.…  Seguir leyendo »

Despite the threat of Covid-19, nature lovers thronged Ueno Park in Tokyo on March 21 to take pictures of the cherry blossoms. Credit Charly Triballeau/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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By late March, Covid-19 had already unleashed havoc across the globe; the internet was flooded with terrifying images and videos. Yet somehow, things in Japan remained unbelievably normal. On March 21, when the Japanese government still thought the nation would be hosting the Olympics this summer, large crowds of people — many wearing face masks, but some not — headed outside to enjoy each other’s company under the cherry blossoms that filled the landscape.

After seeing photos from that day, some of which had captured significant international attention, an American friend of mine emailed me asking, “Is this real?”

All I could say was, “I know, I can’t believe it either, but it’s absolutely real.”…  Seguir leyendo »

Sonny Rollins performing at the Beacon Theatre in New York in 2010. Credit Chad Batka for The New York Times

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When people talk about art, they tend toward a specific type of question. Who was the first to play a tune? Who owns a specific style? Who can judge when borrowing crosses the line? Those are questions for a political, technological world. In my mind, debates about black versus white — whether a guy can make $100 a year or $1 million a year from his art — are just dead ends. And technology, as Aldous Huxley said, is just a faster way of doing ignorant things.

Technology is no savior. We can eat, sleep, look at screens, make money — all aspects of our physical existence — but that doesn’t mean anything.…  Seguir leyendo »