What would the world look like without the Arts?

Welcome to the next blog of the ‘What would the world look like without…’ series. You can have a read of last weeks blog here, which focused on a world without Art.

This week, I’ll be once again looking at what the Arts have done in our world so far, the things we would have missed had the Arts not existed, but in this blog I’ll be focussing on material things, items we wouldn’t have if Art didn’t exist.

Art is the stored honey of the human soul – Theodore Dreiser

In my last blog, I wrote that many people see the Arts as something made mostly to observe, and the extent of the impact that the Arts have had in our world and society, and continue to have today, usually gets overlooked.

So today, let’s have a look at some ordinary things, that maybe we take for granted, that wouldn’t exist in a world without art.

Toothbrushes

Everyone uses toothbrushes; it’s a part of our daily dental hygiene routine. But did you know that the inventor of the toothbrush was an artist? Ok, if you search up William Addis on a search engine, maybe the first thing that comes up won’t be that he was an artist.

But he did use his imagination and creativity to create the first design of the modern mass-produced toothbrush that we know and use today, and if we go back to one of my first blogs (What would the world look like without visual arts, which you can read here), I defined the Arts as,

‘anything to do with the application of creativity and imagination’

Food

Now obviously, no one person invented food, I don’t think the invention of food is even possible, but the way in which we see and eat food today has definitely been influenced by art. The first thing I would like to point out is that culinary arts are a thing, and whilst yes you could argue that it mainly applies to food you might eat at a restaurant, art has still influenced what we eat and how we eat it.

For example, birthday cakes. After the industrial revolution made buying many many items much easier and cheaper, extravagant multi layered cakes as well as ingredients and tools for decorating became much more popular, which is why today many households indulge in the long standing tradition of decorating a birthday cake!

Now I could keep listing every day items that have been brought to us with influences from Art, but this blog would probably become more like an essay than just a blog.

In conclusion

So, hopefully you’ve learnt that the Arts are in fact important, and that they play a massive role in our world, whether for means of expression, or for creation and inventions.