As well as being a biologist, I have tried to be an artist. Compared to many artists, past and present, my talents are meager, but I much appreciate the great talents of the present and past in all forms of artistic endeavors, including the visual arts, literature and music. They are what makes us human and art includes some of the best creations of our civilization. I will concentrate here on the visual arts, because I am at present more engaged with them.
Artists can often say things that others can’t. The examination of man’s inhumanity to man shown in Goya’s works, and the biting works of the caricaturist and cartoonist who poke fun at powerful people, are examples. Some of the latter even got their cartoons banned because of their honesty. We owe a great debt to such brave artists.
Street art has become a genre all its own and of course that brings up Banksy (See: en.wikipedia.org/...), probably the most famous street artist today. His art has often been biting and critiques modern evils in creative ways.
I visited the National Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. a number of years ago and only had a few hours to spare. I thus could only touch on its riches, but it was definitely an uplifting experience and a hopeful one. If humans could produce such wonderful artwork as the Alba Madonna or Ginevra than there may be hope for us all.
I really got hooked on going to art museums back when I was living near Las Cruces, New Mexico. They had a Renoir exhibit at the El Paso Museum of Art and I went to see it. I was struck with Renoir’s colors; the vividness of his reds and blues. There is definitely an emotional experience involved that is uplifting and transcendent in the presence of such beauty. It makes one more optimistic about our species.
In Guanajuato, Mexico, I unfortunately missed the Diego Rivera art museum, but did get to the Don Quixote one. It contained the artworks of a number of artists, including Rivera, that dealt with the writings of Cervantes and was impressive in its own way. The Freer and Sackler museums in Washington contain mostly Asiatic art, and were certainly also impressive. I still have a print of a delicate rendering of a Mandarin drake and duck from the Sackler gift shop. It is really sad that the latter family name has been so tarnished in recent years.
Art is to a large degree a human construct, although chimpanzees can do abstracts once they get the idea, but they are unable to paint realistic paintings and only humans can produce the kind of art that a Picasso, Monet, Manet, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Da Vinci, Raphael, O’Keefe, Van Gogh and many others could paint. In many ways, art both defines and crosses cultures, and includes major achievements that elevate human thought.
Yet art, like science, and other human endeavors, has known sin (as J. Robert Oppenheimer said of physicists.) It has had its apologists for Napoleon (David and Ingres), and the art extolling Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc. It is hard for me to even look at such art because it serves as a cover for destructive acts so vile that they are difficult to contemplate, despite whatever talent is involved. Humans have the ability to distort and corrupt any human activity and that should always be kept in mind.
That said, how could anyone deny the genius of Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Raphael, or Monet?