Art and the Embrace Of Life
The ultimate test of every act of creativity: Does it help you to enthusiastically, passionately, whole-heartedly and gratefully Embrace all your life? This, I believe, is the basic Purpose of all the arts — and thus should be the basic Intention of every artist.
What do I mean by “Embrace”? The word is derived from the Greek brakhion, meaning the upper arm, hence brachial and brassiere. And in Hamlet, Fortinbras — strong arms. To embrace is to open one’s upper arms to invite and accept the other into oneself. I like to think of the upper arms originating not at the shoulders, but in the center of the chest, and extending out from there to enfold, encircle.
And there we find the metaphoric heart, the heart chakra, the chakra of love. Thus, to embrace is to open one’s heart to welcome the other with love. To embrace is to love.
The great sculptor Henry Moore proclaimed that a work of art should not be an escape from life, but “an expression of [its] significance, a stimulation to greater effort in living.”[1] Not an escape, but an Embrace. This — and nothing less than this — is Healing, True Healing. To this we are stimulated to Great Art.
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[1] Modern Artists on Art, ed. Robert L. Herbert. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1964, p. 141.
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See Dr. Diamond talk about the healing purpose of the arts in this related, inspirational video.
