colour and quill
  • Home
  • Art
    • Paintings
    • Drawings
    • Birds of a Feather
    • Murals
  • Writing
    • Publications
    • Awards
    • Words
    • Articles
  • House of Words
    • Woordhuis building
    • Woordhuis
  • About
  • Blog

Meditations

Comfort versus aesthetics

2/16/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture

​I was going to rage about the fact that people always seem to choose comfort over aesthetics; that art and artists do not stand a chance in a world where beauty is a second rate citizen.

This temporary insight came to me in a garden. With the hot, dry summer not letting up, plants were suffering. People preferred to save water, while overspending on electricity to keep air conditioners running day in and out. Swimming pools monopolised any outdoor water supply. Clearly, the comfort of cool air and water was much more important than the beauty of a flourishing garden.

Similarly, people would rather buy a new lounge suite than a painting or choose the latest kitchen utensil over the latest poetry collection. So not only comfort, but utility, comes first.

I thought that this might somehow fit with the well-known pyramid of needs that Maslow proposed, where people’s needs are satisfied in a hierarchy moving from physiological to safety, then love/belonging, esteem and finally self-actualisation. Obviously the physiological or physical needs of comfort and utility would have higher priority than art.

(By the way, where does art fit into this pyramid? Do we need art? Of course we do, but why? We’ll leave that question for another day.)

To get back to the comfort-aesthetics rivalry – so people prefer physical comfort to spiritual enrichment. Or do they?

Not all people. Maybe not even the most people. Just some of the people some of the time. Take the crowds who will suffer significant physical discomfort to attend a music concert, whether it is standing in queues to get tickets or standing through a performance by their favourite rock star. Art wins out over comfort.

Or take someone who buys a bouquet of flowers instead of a ready-made meal; someone who buys a book instead of a drink; someone who does spend the dollars to beautify a garden. Even – and this is where aesthetics merges into vanity in a scary continuum – someone who spends the food money on a new red dress.

So my theory died a rapid death. Physical survival (comfort, food, safety) might be an evolutionary necessity, but often the need for spiritual survival will jump the queue. What a relief. Long live beauty!

(Now go on, buy that work of art, that pretty trinket, that bouquet, that red dress!)

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Protected by Copyscape

    Archives

    January 2021
    August 2020
    September 2019
    January 2019
    August 2018
    April 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
Photo used under Creative Commons from popofatticus
  • Home
  • Art
    • Paintings
    • Drawings
    • Birds of a Feather
    • Murals
  • Writing
    • Publications
    • Awards
    • Words
    • Articles
  • House of Words
    • Woordhuis building
    • Woordhuis
  • About
  • Blog