Why Art?

1 October 2012Bud Patel

The economic challenges of the day have caused every level of government and, as a result, schools to tighten their collective budget belts. As a result, funding priorities often do not include arts programs. Over the past few days, I’ve visited many of our Arts programs. I seen the debaters duel, painters create, sculptors design, dancers perform, and choir sing. While I have yet to cover all facets of our symphony of art, it left me with a deep feeling of pride and excitement. Creativity along a great spectrum of art. Visiting Mr. Luna’s and Ms. Mannion’s art classes showed me how lines, color and luminance can magically transform a two- dimensional canvas into one where you can see distance and curves in three dimensions. Daniel Pink, noted American economist and author of the book "Drive" sees future jobs being more right-brain centric. If you don’t know, we have two distinct hemispheres of our brain. Left – logical, sequentialRight – holistic, creative, artistic To take it to the next level, it’s how we connect across both hemispheres that makes the biggest difference. I then ran across a book by V.S. Ramachandrin, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego – "The Tell Tale Brain". In it he examines the challenging question of Why We Like Art? Anthropologists believe that humans have always been attracted to art and that recent brain research enables to us understand why? A few interesting notes: We like symmetrical shapes – reminds of the natural world and more specifically the living world. Animals, for instance, have symmetrical shapes.The Peak Shift Principle – when we exaggerate the original form, it becomes even more attractive. Apparently, it hyper activates our neural system. Abstract art and Impressionism therefore may to be distorted to the eye but pleasing to the emotional centre of our brain. I’m not sure about you, but, to me, art is very personal. I’m so pleased to see us taking advantage of the new Centre for Art and Humanities during our own, very distinctive tripartite timetable. The longer art afternoons enable you to fully immerse into one, two, three or even four activities that feed the artist soul we all have. We like Art because we are human. As I continue my learning from you and the Brentwood community, one of our ‘jewels in the crown’ is undoubtedly our amazing art programme. I commend Mrs. Widenmaier and the entire arts faculty for making your experience at Brentwood truly special.

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