By: Leela Xie
One of the best ways to understand the role of art in times of war is to look at Ukraine. Just outside of Kyiv, you can see how civilizations were being slaughtered and culture is being trampled one after the other. Many masterpieces, as well as many citizens, have gone underground in Kyiv. A smaller Rubens can be found at the Khanenko National Museum of Arts, where it hangs on a blue wall beneath a Beaux-Arts skylight. The collection is concealed.
In the early days of the war, Kyiv was surrounded by Russian forces, forcing half of the city’s population to flee. Many artists in the United States were curious about what they might do other than donate to organizations and support refugees. Museums and orchestras expressed their displeasure and allegiance, and the Ukrainian national anthem was performed at the Metropolitan Opera, while a Ukrainian folk song started “Saturday Night Live.”
Ukraine’s government has not shied away from supporting foreign culture to boost the military effort. President Volodymyr Zelensky has spoken in front of audiences at the Venice Biennale, the Cannes Film Festival, and the Grammys. “On our land, we are fighting Russia, which brings horrible silence with its bombs — the dead silence,” the president stated. “Fill the silence with your music.”
Art is necessary during battle because “history cannot live without the discipline of imagination,” argued Jefferson. We draw parallels between the past and the future, close and far, abstract and tangible, via art, casting received certainties into doubt. We gaze and listen in a way that allows thought and feeling to coexist.
In severe cases, this cultural appreciation might transcend the intellectual to the moral plane. Art, literature, and music might equip us with increased abilities to understand our new present as something more than a stream of words and pictures if we pay close attention — a challenge made more difficult with each meme-burst and iPhone deployment.
They can, as Jefferson put it, “offer methods of viewing and organizing the universe”: “not only our world, but those worlds abroad that we know so little of.”