Artless and Mindless

What is this website and weblog Arts and Minds all about? in this blog I examine connections among art, mind, thought, technology and behavior.

When we think of ancient civilizations or primordial peoples and their cultures we think, first, of their arts. We search for a historical record of their sculpture, painting, their dance, their technology and their way of life. We have archive and study treasured examples of their poetry and other writing.

Art (including architecture) is the legacy of culture and is a civilization’s longest lasting achievement (with the possible exception of a radioactively poisoned environment). Art encodes knowledge, beliefs, and wisdom. In other words, art encodes the meanings and values of culture. It is not inaccurate to describe art as an early precursor to technological development. We find stone carvings, stone arrangements, earthworks, glyphs, and drawings upon natural walls of stone or stucco. Since the earliest recorded time (and the arts compose most of that record), humans appear to have included the arts as integral with our environment. We scratched drawings and designs on cave walls and architecture with equal intensity. So much is this true that there are areas within our brains where symbolic, graphic, musical, spatial and movement are processed. There is evidence from neurological research that when children are involved in the arts their mathematical and thinking skills improve. Art changes the brain. The making of art is ‘exercise’ for other thinking skills. We are an artistic species. That potential to make and ‘read’ or see art is in each of us. It resides in every society. It is in every child.

But art is not in every school. It is not in every education budget. We are creating only one half of a culture, and we will only be able to claim half a legacy. It is the job of schools to nurture the whole potential of every child’s brain.

If we value the minds of our children (they are the minds of our culture’s future) then we should immerse them in art. We must enable schools to support the arts in order to build healthy minds. Arts help make the mind. Without the arts we are artless and mindless.

Mayer Spivack