Is the universe a work of art?

Romy Aran
Romy Aran
Jul 27, 2017 · 4 min read

We can stare at the night sky for hours, gazing at the pure blackness of space. In the city, we can’t get more than a few stars, the moon, and some planets. But in the countryside, the sky bursts in a flurry of sparks. The atmosphere seems to disappear and you feel submerged in the void of space. You feel like you can sense the Earth zip through space faster than a bullet. Your mind loses any terrestrial ties and floats away. Gravity feels like an illusion. There is only the sky and you.

These are profound feelings. If we felt this way towards a work of art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (for example), we would commend the work of art for evoking feelings that are so precious to us all. Some works of art re-iginite feelings and sensations which we are deprived of in an urban environment. It could be as basic as not seeing the stars or as complex as feeling trapped in a certain political system. In the words of René Dubos, from his wonderful book “So Human An Animal”,

“In many respects, modern man is like a wild animal spending its life in a zoo; like the animal, he is fed abundantly and protected from inclemencies but deprived of the natural stimuli essential for many functions of his body and mind. Man is alienated not only from other men, not only from nature, but more importantly from the deepest layers of his fundamental self.”

We live in an artificial environment in which money takes the role of the ultimate resource (although some may argue that in today’s society, the power of entrepreneurship is equally resourceful), so much so that the distinction between the work we enjoy and the work we have to do becomes fuzzy. Many people are indifferent towards their work. Many convince themselves that it is a good job, else they face the looming threat of depression which may engulf their lives. This is because our society trains employees and business people to spend all their time working. Individual creativity isn’t encouraged, only loyalty to a corporation. The saddest consequence of this culture is seeing people talk about their work while at dinners, as if they are walking billboards advertising their companies wherever they go. It’s as if they have nothing more to talk about. Why must our society be so rigid? This rigidness has existed for centuries, but not nearly in the form we have today. Industrialization has turned work into a modern slave operation in many companies. As such, art has become more important for the people. Art had less boundaries because it had to satisfy a void left by the dominating lifestyle of industrial-based labor and business. Surrealism was seemingly ridiculous, but it allowed for the mind to roam free. The mind has no barriers, although companies sought, and still seek, to build the walls of normality and standards around the mind.

Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Salvador Dali

As Dubos wrote, society deprives us of many fundamental feelings. The light pollution of our cities sometimes renders our night sky a foggy yellow. The stars have inspired humanity for millennia. They have given birth to gods, mythologies, and religions which in turn have changed the course of history. They have inspired humanity to build the first rockets and to shoot for the moon. Such an audacious dream could only be inspired from something free of terrestrial bounds, as our mind naturally is. The sky can evoke all these feelings, even more so now that we have Hubble Space Telescope images of nebulae and galaxies and star clusters which capture utter beauty. However, some may argue that the void of space and the stars we see at night are even more powerful, as the stars are only pinpricks of light, on the very cusp of existing and fading from reality. We are drawn to their curious nature.
Is space a work of art, even though it has no artist? Art can bring out hidden feelings within us all. As my last passage just tried to indicate, the sky does exactly that. Whether you look at Surrealist art or up at the night sky, you feel liberated, unshackled from the norms of society and you feel that you can accomplish anything. I would argue that the universe, indeed, is a work of art.

Romy Aran

Written by

Romy Aran

I’m a student investigating the complexities of the cosmos and of our society, two facets of reality shaping our understanding of the universe.

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