The Role Of Arts And The Artist

1416 Words6 Pages
The Role of Art and the Artist
Edgar H. Schein

Why is art relevant to other elements of society like business or government? Why should managers learn anything about art and the role of the artist? I have thought about this for years and have recently formulated some thoughts. I preface this short essay by noting that I have not done “research” in this area. Rather, I come at this from a personal point of view, both as a lifetime sketcher and as a clinician interested in seeing how artistic activity has affected my life and the lives of others with whom I have worked. The several “functions” of art and artists that I will describe below overlap and interact. I separate them to highlight the variety of functions that can be identified, once we reflect on this topic. First, art and artists stimulate us to see more, hear more, and experience more of what is going on within us and around us. As part of their training, artists expand their perceptual and expressive range. One of their key roles, then, is to help the rest of us see more, to broaden our perspectives, and to get in touch with both internal and external forces that we might otherwise not notice. This point applies particularly to the visual arts, but is probably also a factor in musical composition and performance arts. I suspect that composers and actors, like painters and sculptors, have to learn to see and hear before they can create. Many of the exercises through which artists learn how to “see” better are highly applicable to human situations we mismanage because we have not learned to see what is actually going on. Second, art does and should disturb, provoke, shock, and inspire. It is in the nature of culture formation that we seek stability and predictability in our environment. We all live in safe cocoons created by our occupation, social class, ethnicity, religion, group memberships, and family.
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