During the tributes to Hollywood’s recently departed at the Academy Awards ceremony, a handsome portrait and quote from Robert Redford loomed over the stage as Barbra Streisand toasted him with a few bars of “The Way We Were.” It read: “The glory of art is that it can not only survive change, it can lead it.”
It was the sort of line that might otherwise glide past in the soft-focus nostalgia of an awards ceremony, but given our particular historical moment it landed with unusual gravity. War flickers across our screens with terrible familiarity. Politics hums with the endless, exhausting static of white noise. The cultural temperature seems permanently set to “boil.”
And yet there was Redford’s quiet assertion, hanging above the stage like a small lantern in the night.
This isn’t a sentimental claim. In the long scope of wars, plagues, political upheavals and economic collapse, artists have been counted on to step forward—not necessarily with answers, but with the images, songs, stories and ideas that help the rest of us remember who we are. Art is how civilizations metabolize chaos.
When “things fall apart” (oh, Yeats), someone somewhere picks up a guitar, writes a poem or paints an image that captures a feeling that might otherwise remain inexpressible—yet somehow gives form to the idea we need precisely when we need it. Art doesn’t help us escape so much as orient us to the changed landscape of our times (both figuratively and, sadly, literally).
The arts have the peculiar ability to make courage contagious. One voice becomes two, then 10, then thousands. A film reframes a moment. A song becomes a rallying cry. A novel quietly rearranges the furniture inside someone’s mind, and they’re better for it.
None of this requires grand gestures. The myth of art is that it must be monumental to matter. Not true. Its power often resides in smaller acts: the local theater putting on a play, the street musician filling a corner with melody, the freshman auteur making a film on their phone.
Artists do not stop the storms of history. But we build the lanterns we carry through them. This is why Redford’s line reads less like a platitude than a reminder.
When the world grows uncertain, artists don’t disappear.
We get to work.
Daedalus Howell is the editor of this paper, host of ‘The Drive’ on 95.5 FM and writer-director of ‘Werewolf Serenade.’ More at dhowell.com.
