The notion that exposure to art can make one a better person has some of its roots in 17th and 18th Century England, when an emerging middle class was elbowing aside the landed gentry at the feast of culture, says Todd Parker, a professor at DePaul University. The arts represented a higher, more ethereal realm to which the newly wealthy class could aspire. Writers such as essayist Joseph Addison (1672-1719) "saw their role as polite instructors for this class," Parker says. "Addison talked about the cultivating influence of the arts, about raising the lower classes."
Improving the soul
Art was a civilizing force. Art was something you could look at or lavish time upon in order to improve your soul -- or at least to make it appear to your neighbors as if you were interested in improving your soul.
"Addison often argues that characteristics like wit and taste distinguish the true gentleman from the rabble and that an awareness of beauty improves both the individual mind and society as a whole," Parker notes.
By the 19th Century, the idea had a firm grip on the cultural imagination: Art was the ultimate self-help tool. Art was about good, high, holy things, things that directed your gaze heavenward. Art, Arnold wrote, promulgates "a human nature complete on all sides."
This conviction continued into the 20th Century, although with some modifications. Along with moral uplift, art also served its didactic purpose by dealing with urgent political realities. The trend toward naturalism in literature and drama, in the work of novelists such as Theodore Dreiser and playwright Arthur Miller, reflected the idea that art mattered because it could teach us things about social injustices, about galling inequities, about soul-killing alienation, and along the way, about how to become more conscientious people.
Better people, in fact.
Art's moral responsibility may have found its greatest late 20th-Century champion in the late John Gardner, whose book "On Moral Fiction" (1978) is still in print. A work of art "is good . . . only when it has a clear positive moral effect, presenting valid models for imitation, eternal verities worth keeping in mind, and a benevolent vision of the possible which can inspire and incite human beings toward virtue," Gardner wrote.
The idea that art is supposed to make people better still holds sway. The appeal of Hannibal Lecter, the fictional serial killer created by novelist Thomas Harris and brought to the most vibrant cinematic life by actor Anthony Hopkins, proves this by indirection. What makes the Lecter character fascinating is that, despite an elegantly refined taste for things such as classical music and the fine arts, he is a monster; the supposedly civilizing influence of art has backfired.
Had Lecter been a bumbling, armpit-scratching, beer-guzzling, WWF-watching layabout in a dirty T-shirt and backward baseball cap, his cannibalism would have seemed merely grotesque, the character forgettable. But the aesthetic sophistication of Harris' character refutes our clear, simple expectation of the way culture is supposed to work -- culture is supposed to make us more, not less, human -- which in turn makes Lecter diabolically memorable.
Yet the question still hangs in the air like the final note of an overture: Can art make you a better person?
"I think it can," Steiner says, "but I would want to say, `What do you mean by a better person?' I think art makes you aware. You learn things about yourself by what you respond to in art."
Parker says, "I think exposure to culturally significant works makes you smarter. It gives you something to use your brain on. When you read and think about difficult material, when you think about questions of aesthetic value and beauty, it makes you a more competent thinker. The lack of ability to think produces people who haven't earned their souls."
Phil Reynolds, executive director of the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, says, "Exposure to artistic statements is definitely a life-enhancing experience."
And it can contribute to psychological wholeness as well, says Mark Smaller, a Chicago psychoanalyst.
"From the moment we're born, we're constantly looking for meaning in our lives," Smaller says. "We look in relationships, in work, in religion and spirituality -- and in art. Art can feel very organizing. When we're feeling good, we feel organized inside. If we're feeling depressed, we feel disorganized.
"I can be feeling out of sorts and then I go to a Puccini opera or look at a Chagall and suddenly, I feel organized and good. More whole, more cohesive. It's the same with a movie or a novel too."
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