Art is like the hair of society. Although art and literature may seem optional in daily life, they are what endure when people and societies do not.
Article: The interview with Mo Yan - Nobel Prize in Literature 2012
From the Chinese novelist and 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature Laureate Mo Yan:
"I have an analogy to the relationship between literature and society, and that is the relationship people have with their hair: It is, of course, good to have a full head of hair. It looks nice and helps protect one's head. But if one doesn't have much hair, like me, that's fine, as I'm still healthy. So it is with literature. A society may have many novels, poems, poets, and writers, which is very good. But if there are fewer of them, life is still…survivable. So I think, whether it is literature or art, it's like human hair.
In the end, when a person dies, he gets buried in the ground. If he is dug up after many years, we find that his flesh has become earth but his hair remains. I mean, many things in society change and disappear, perhaps only literature and art will remain."
I found the analogy oddly compelling. It's almost too clunky to come from a novelist, yet strangely accurate in capturing what art is.
Art is not like air or water. You can live without it. A society with fewer writers or artists is still survivable. Art and writing do not matter because they are necessary for survival. They matter because they endure.
This reminds me that luxury is art that happens to have a little bit of functionality.
Also, hair does decompose. But Mo Yan didn't win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, did he?