The Power of Art for the Individual & Society

Picasso's Guernica, 1937

I know the artist can institute change in both the individual and society. In terms of the individual, my sister had lymphoma, a terminal cancer disease for six years. As you can imagine the treatments, chemo, radiation, etc, were awful and debilitating. Sometimes I wondered if the treatment was worse than the disease. But my sister continued to live her life and she decided to take acting classes being taught up in Westchester County by an actress (I later took lessons from her) and although these did not prolong her life,they enabled her to confront each day with more optimism. I attended some of the classes and I saw a side of my sister that I never knew before, even doing improvs.These acting classes enabled her to find some joy in her last year.

As for changing society, some artists moved from their art to political activities, expressing themselves against a particular regime or against war or the A-bomb or some other cause. I think of Picasso's La Guernica, a wall mural that spoke out against the Franco bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War. It is interesting that after the war, Franco built a monument to his forces but excluded those of the Republic even though the latter was the elected government. Closer to home, artists joined and contributed their art to the civil rights movement and to the anti-Vietnam War movement. Art is a wonderful tool to express protest and to advocate political and social change. Karin says that art talks to the soul of mankind. That may be and we may appreciate it for its beauty, but it also has political and social power as well.

Finally, in my own case, I was stuck in an unhappy professional situation that, for various reasons, I could not escape. In fact, my work was making me sick. My doctor suggested therapy but when I called the local shrink and discovered he would charge $75 an hour, I decided to return to acting and began auditions for the local community theater. So in my case, acting was a form of therapy that enabled me to survive some hard academic years. Of course, it is always risky to try and identify one variable as the defining factor in a life/societal change. And while these incidents are largely anecdotal, the lack of empirical evidence does not negate their veracity.

Ernest Giglio, Prescott, AZ