Think of that kid you went to school with. You know the one. Very quiet. Maybe their clothes were out of date, or didn’t quite fit, or both. They wore their shyness like armor, using silence to buffet a world they’d already learned was cruel. There was probably something going on at home; much younger siblings who demanded more attention and therefore left them neglected (or a de facto guardian), an alcoholic, abusive, or absent parent. That kid was always drawing or reading in class like it was a matter of life or death.
Because it was.
You know that kid. Maybe you were that kid. Maybe you were the kid who skipped all of your classes but art class. Who studied as hard as you could in math so you could keep a C average and stay in the top choir. Who spent hours in your room fiddling with the guitar your cousin gave you, learned every dance on TikTok, or became an amateur expert in Studio Ghibli movies.
According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (1943), in order to have space for creative expression, we must have all the other tiers of needs met (those needs being physiological (food, water), safety, belonging, and esteem/accomplishment). In other words, all of those needs must be met FIRST until we can create things. With no offense to Abraham Maslow, that is dead wrong. One look at “that” kid, in the back of the class proves it. I’m not saying that, given the choice, a starving person would choose a painting OVER a turkey sandwich. But the hierarchy of needs is much more muddy than Maslow and his pop psychology contemporaries might want to believe.
If esteem or accomplishment were necessary, then creative output would literally never happen (look at Vincent Van Gogh). If belonging were necessary, then anyone in unhealthy relationships or isolation would never produce art. If physical safety were necessary, then no art would come during wartime. If adequate food, water, and rest were necessary, then art would never come from prisons, ghettos, or internment camps. And yet, art has been born in the darkest corners, in the most cruel and horrific moments of human existence. It’s not always beautiful or nice, but it is always art.
Art is not a privilege. It is a right. It is a need right along with food, water, air, and socialization (which is arguably more important than safety; just look at the effect of lack of socialization on those in solitary confinement). Because what is deemed “art” and what is deemed “entertainment” has been decreed by the ivory towers of academia, we often assume that “art” holds a place of highest privilege. Not only do I disagree with the separation of “art” and “entertainment” at the root of their very existence, but I also disagree that only the privileged may experience art. For the purposes of this essay, everything from Megan Thee Stallion to Mozart to the Macarena to makeup to Monet is art. All of it. No exceptions, no exclusions.
For art to be art, it has to make someone feel something powerful. That’s it. It can be a soul-stirring new perspective or it can be the raw freedom of a loud song, or the joyful intimacy of a picture your child drew just for you. Even better, this means that art is defined by how it makes YOU feel, not what some old white guy in an ivory tower decided was good (spoiler alert: much of what we consider “important art” today was thought of as tasteless, common, or even bawdy, in its time).
To call the experience of art and creativity a privilege is to deny art. The denial of art and artistic expression is one of the most powerful tools of oppression, because art IS culture, IS identity. When Nazi Germans occupied Poland, they forbid the music of Fryderyk Chopin because of its powerful ties to Polish national identity and resistance. White colonists banned slaves from gathering, finding spirituals (which are themselves amalgams of different African musical traditions) to be, “idolatrous and wild.” Indian Residential Schools sought to strip native children for generations of their culture by – you guessed it – forbidding their language, traditional grooming and adornment practices (which is definitely art), and creative expression in the form of native art such as beadwork, dancing, praying, singing, and weaving.
And yet, in all of these instances, art is too powerful a force for oppression and denial. Fryderyk Chopin remains one of the most well-known composers of all time. Spirituals continue to endure as an anchor of black culture and symbol of both hope and defiance, well past the Emancipation Proclamation. They were widely sung during the civil rights marches of the mid-20th century, and singer and activist LaTosha Brown frequently uses her bombastic singing voice to sing spirituals in interviews when mere words fail. Native artists are rising with a beautiful, explosive fervor on TikTok and Instagram, platforms where they don’t have to rely on traditional gatekeepers to let their voices be heard, and can instead reclaim appropriated designs and customs.
In goodreads reviews for Jenny Odell’s book How to Do Nothing, the main criticism of the book is of Odell herself. Her point of view (that in order to reclaim our time from capitalism we must spend more time with art and nature) is deemed unworthy because she is an ivory-tower, Ivy League, Bay Area academic. In many ways, those critiques are fair. As a lover of weird art myself, of performance art and gleefully nonsensical or subversive art, I admit that her descriptions of her projects are a bit obtuse for the average passerby. Thanks to her likely upper-middle-class upbringing, Odell’s experience of art has likely never been life-or-death in the way it was for David Bloch, though art often feels that way, regardless of your privilege or upbringing.
And yet, the very existence of these reviews ignores that for centuries upon centuries, Jenny Odell (as a biracial woman) and the reviewers themselves would not have had the privilege of literacy. Reading the book is, in and of itself, a privilege! Writing the review on the Internet is a privilege that millions of people around the world don’t have! When you have privilege, it is counterproductive to use it to shut others down. Instead of pointing out the privilege of others (which Odell already does to herself in the book) and calling it a day, why aren’t these people spending more time using their privilege of education and the Internet to find useful ways to remove the barriers to art and nature?
It’s true that educational, financial, and geographical barriers to art exist (though thanks to the Internet, great museums and archives are being catalogued and uploaded to be studied from across the world). But much of these barriers exist for “great” art, that is classical art and literature, and highly technical disciplines such as opera and ballet.
However, these disciplines and traditions account for only a small percentage of Western art. Fashion, pop music, television, architecture, graffiti, graphic design; these are the ways we experience art all the time, every day. Even more traditionally “stodgy” disciplines such as poetry are find ways to break through via digital mediums (look at the enormous success of Instagram poet Rupi Kaur).
It’s also important to remember that art is work, and therefore artists deserve to be fairly compensated for their labor. Arguably the greatest barrier to art is not whether or not creativity can be expressed or experienced, but who is allowed to subsist on their art as a form of living. The subject of the exact method of compensation is another discussion for another day.
In millions of situations, in hundreds of ways, by trillions of people, art is the life raft we cling to in times of hardship. Art reminds us of who we are, of where we’ve been, of what we share, of what we can learn. To decry art as an experience only for the privileged is to deny the experience of art to the masses. It perpetuates the notion that only the wealthy, intelligent, or lucky can and should experience art.
Bull. Shit.
Art is as necessary as air. Anyone who says otherwise is taking it for granted.
