Scruton on what children can teach us about art
/From the late Sir Roger Scruton’s documentary “Why Beauty Matters”:
“Art needs creativity, and creativity is about sharing. It is a call to others to see the world as the artist sees it. That is why we find beauty in the naïve art of children. Children are not giving us ideas in the place of creative images, nor are they wallowing in ugliness. They are trying to affirm the world as they see it and to share what they feel. Something of the child’s pure delight in creation survives in every true work of art.”
Scruton makes this aside as a point of contrast with modern art—which is intentionally insular, confrontational, transgressive, and over-intellectual if not ideological—but in doing so he makes a broader point about what art is and what it’s for. This description of children’s art is also honestly and accurately observed.
I’ve thought of this passage many times over the last few weeks, ever since my eldest son eagerly presented me with a picture he had drawn. It was a pencil and highlighter drawing that showed me holding my youngest son at the dinner table—a picture of his dad and one of his little brothers. It was drawn from life without my noticing, and joy he took both in drawing and giving it to me, the joy in and care taken over the details, including the stubble of my beard, and the simple, straightforward, honest love in the picture itself have stuck with me. My kids have drawn many things for me, but this one in particular struck me as a clear example of Scruton’s “pure delight” in “sharing.”
Last week I tacked it to the wall of my office at school. May any art I create be motivated as purely as my son’s.
“Why Beauty Matters” is worth your while, as I wrote here almost four years ago following Scruton’s death. You can watch the whole thing on Vimeo here.
