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Who says we need art? And who says we don’t?

As a youngster I was told many times, by many people, that I should do this or I needed to do that or I had to do the other, and, being the independent sort, I came to the conclusion that these statements were incomplete, only one-half of compound sentences.

For example, “You must brush your teeth every night,” needs a clause such as, “If you want to have healthy teeth and gums.”

In order to complete the proposition, “People need art in their lives,” what is the other clause? I cannot make an argument for the necessity of art appreciation without a proper motivation.

What might a person want that would justify labeling art a need?

Let’s take a look at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Better, let’s explore his later, Expanded Hierarchy of Needs. I am not going to summarize Maslow’s work here; it is fascinating but there is a lot of it. Please do research the subject if you haven’t already studied it at length.

Maslow listed eight needs in the expanded version, and divided the list into a lower stack of four deficiency needs and a higher stack of four growth needs. Billions of people in the world can barely fill their deficiency needs for survival: sustenance, shelter, love, and esteem. Growth needs are beyond their reach or interest.

So, yes, I say we need art as a growth need; and no, much of the world does not or cannot acknowledge such a need, according to Maslow.

As a teacher, and more specifically Academic Decathlon coach, I visited many student homes wherein I saw no books, no art, no musical instruments. I was sad to notice that, but those families were getting along, most of them.

Our little Academic Decathlon practice sessions were, for most of my charges, their first serious introduction to the visual arts, music, persuasive argument, a scientific topic, and others. We dealt not just with subsistence learning, but studied material that satisfies cognitive and aesthetic needs, two of Maslow’s upper four, growth needs.

The two top levels of needs remain to be addressed: self-actualization and transcendence.

What if a painting, a piece of music, a novel or even an astonishing theorem in mathematics or science led the aesthete to consider the work not only in the context of the world, but even as including herself, blowing her mind, so to speak, and causing her to expand her perception of herself and her feelings? That is what, in another essay, I would describe as a sublime work of art, and to which I aspire in every painting.

Aspire, I said, though not necessarily achieve.

A work of art that did that would target the viewer’s need for self-actualization. Lovely, heady stuff. Do we need that? Oh yes! If you want to expand your experience of yourself, you need art.

And then, at the tippy top of the Maslow pyramid, we find transcendence. Transcendence is beyond the scope of this essay, but I am going to exceed the scope of this essay and discuss it anyway.

The need for transcendence is a need for bonding with humankind, the universe, divinity. My painting is for me a satisfaction of my own transcendent need—as is the production of this blog, for that matter. I believe transcendence is something we must seek for ourselves; I don’t know that a work of art can fulfill that need for the percipient, though a painting or a symphony might inspire an extra-personal effort.