Week 7

Venus de Milo

Good afternoon, class. Hope you are well. Today I will return the summary pieces on Michael Pollan's "Six Rules for Eating Wisely," and other papers, and we will review some of the key points. It is time you plan for the research paper and get the work underway. We will discuss it more today in class.

I did not plan to post the image of a half-naked statue, but it was on my desktop and as an emblem of culture, I could really do no better, though this Venus is but one. Yet she is one of the most famous of Greek antiquities, named for the goddess of beauty and love. The Greeks contributed to Western culture some of our most enduring ideals, that of democracy, for example, and that of the wondrous strength, grace, and beauty (ideally) of the human form. The Olympian figures of classical Greece continue to inspire people and to inform the way many imagine ideal human form. I am reminded that so much of what we do in life involves the need for love and attention and a sense of community, to combat the terrible feelings of isolation and worthlessness so endemic to a competitive and divisive culture in which the things you can afford, and the status or position you hold, too often define how others see us, and how we see ourselves. This very material, worldly focus diminishes us all, and gives rise to all sorts of conflict, of course. Feeling unloved, or like a loser, we may binge eat, or binge shop (if we can afford it) or ruminate, obsessing on things over which we have little or no control, sinking into depression at last.

The true role of art is not, of course, to make us feel bad or worse about life (though some of it may). We accord art and artists a high place in culture because of the sense that through them comes a sense of something larger, something like " the meaning of life," as Alain de Botton and John Armstrong write in their book Art as Therapy. In it they identify six ways art can serve us:

as a depository of memory
as a wellspring of hope
as an acknowledgment of the truth of sorrow
as a means of rebalancing
as a means of self-understanding
as a means of growth
as a means of appreciation (teaching us to see what we may not otherwise)

Engagement with art can help us learn to be patient, to pay attention to detail, can stoke our curiosity, move us emotionally, make us think more rationally, and provide perspectives at which we might never otherwise arrive. It can teach us about politics, show us how to love and how not to love, reveal the beauties and mysteries of the natural world, and showcase the incredible power for good of humankind. I saw a video not long ago on the very day a local rapper was shot and killed in Deerfield as he sat in his BMW in front of an auto parts store. I was curious and one thing led to another and in the end this video by Childish Gambino captivated me (and others). I had never seen or heard of Gambino, and now I feel enriched by his work, particularly at this historical juncture in American life, when racism and bigotry seem ascendant or rising. I love his dancing, too, I must say, the whole choreography on display. De Botton writes the following:

" If we accept that guiding our emotions is an important part of the process of creating a civilized society, then culture should be recognized as one of the central mechanisms by which we do it, along with politics. It is the music we listen to, the films we see, the buildings, we inhabit and the paintings, sculptures and photographs that change on our walls that function as our subtle guides and educators." (Art as Therapy 100)