Art

I work in an academic library and I've been working on a special project related to Table of Contents in books. This morning I came across a chapter in a book titled The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik Willem Van Loon. The title of the chapter is "A Chapter of Art". I was intrigued by the first few paragraphs about how we relate to art as babies and children. Here is a short excerpt:

When a baby is perfectly healthy and has had enough to eat and has slept all it wants, then it hums a little tune to show how happy it is. To grown-ups this humming means nothing. It sounds like "goo-zum, goo-zum, goo-0-0-0-0," but to the baby it is perfect music. It is his first contribution to art.

As soon as he (or she) gets a little older and is able to sit up, the period of mud-pie making begins. These mud-pies do not interest the outside world. There are too many million babies, making too many million mud-pies at the same time. But to the small infant they represent another expedition ito the pleasant realm of art. The baby is now a sculptor.

At the age of three or four, when the hands begin to obey the brain, the child becomes a painter. His fond mother gives him a box of coloured chalks and every loose bit of paper is rapidly covered with strange pothooks an scrawls which represent houses and horses and terrible naval battles.

Soon however this happiness of just "making things" comes to an end. School begins and the greater part of the day is filled up with work. The business of living, or rather the business of "making a living," becomes the most important event in the life of every boy and girl. There is little time left for "art" between learning the tables of multiplication and the past participles of the irregular French verbs. And unless the desire for making certain things for the mere pleasure of creating them without any hope of a practical return be very strong, the child grows into manhood and forgets that the first five years of his life were mainly devoted to art.

So, is this how it is, then? When we are children we happily create and make art and then when adulthood hits, we become so involved with learning and learning how to make a living that we forget all about the joy of making art and creating. It's sad, really. I like to think about slowing down sometimes and playing like a child. Stopping to smell the roses and spend some quiet time creating. Probably alot more of us would pursue our artistic talents if we did that.