Dilek Yalcin
Periods of intense societal rupture, such as war, political oppression, or global health crises, are often accompanied by an instinctive return to the arts. Contrary to the assumption that art is a luxury or nonessential pursuit, history has repeatedly demonstrated that cultural expression becomes not only urgent but vital in moments of collapse. Art functions not as escapism or luxurious consumption good during these times, but as a mechanism of collective memory, emotional processing and resistance.
The most prominent example of this phenomenon was witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic. As public life shut down and systems of productivity ground to a halt, cultural consumption and creative production persisted, often flourishing under difficult conditions. Despite the physical isolation imposed by the pandemic, millions of individuals turned to artistic media: online concerts, virtual museum tours, poetry readings via video call and the surge of digital artistic content on social media platforms. These were not frivolous distractions. They functioned as coping strategies, community-building tools and emotional anchors during a time of uncertainty and existential anxiety.
The pandemic reaffirmed that art fulfills a fundamental human need, particularly in crisis. Scholars such as Martha Nussbaum and Elaine Scarry have long argued that aesthetic experience is closely linked to ethical and political sensibilities. In her seminal work “The Body in Pain,” Scarry notes that while pain is inexpressible and isolating, art can reintroduce form, communication and meaning to that which defies language. In this light, the global cultural response to COVID-19 was not secondary to the crisis, it was central to the human response.
Historical examples abound. Russian society provides a particularly rich case study of how art endures, even thrives, under extreme duress. The 20th century in Russia was marked by revolution, famine, ideological purges, war and surveillance. Yet during the most repressive decades of Stalinism, the Soviet Union witnessed a simultaneous outpouring of poetic and musical innovation, albeit often under the threat of censorship or exile. During World War II, the Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944) resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands due to starvation and bombardment. Nevertheless, composer Dmitri Shostakovich, himself under siege, completed his Seventh Symphony in the city. In August 1942, this piece was performed by an orchestra of malnourished musicians, many of whom had to be recalled from the front lines. The performance was broadcast throughout the city and to Soviet forces via loudspeakers as a symbolic act of resistance. This moment illustrates how art does not merely survive destruction – it intervenes in it. The arts do not operate as a passive reflection of suffering; they actively shape how societies endure it.
Moreover, the role of art as a form of resistance has been especially apparent in authoritarian contexts. Throughout the 20th century and into the present day, poets, painters, playwrights and filmmakers have often borne witness where official discourse suppresses or distorts reality. Whether in Franco’s Spain, Pinochet’s Chile, or post-invasion Iraq, artistic communities have acted as informal archivists of truth, memorializing violence and giving voice to those silenced by power.
In recent conflicts, from the Syrian civil war to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, visual and performative arts have served as both testimony and protest. Ukrainian artists have projected their cultural identity through theater, music and murals, even as infrastructure collapses around them. The symbolic value of cultural heritage sites like churches, libraries, museums becomes heightened in these times. Their destruction is not incidental but strategic, intended to erase collective memory and identity. Thus, the preservation or re-creation of art in such contexts is a political act.
It is critical to challenge the neoliberal framing of art as “nonessential.” Crises repeatedly expose the fallacy of this perspective. While economies falter and political institutions become unstable, cultural production endures – not in opposition to necessity, but as part of its redefinition. Artistic expression sustains not only memory, but the very idea of personhood. It enables mourning, imagination, dissent and resilience.
The theoretical foundations for this argument can be found in aesthetic philosophy as well. Theodor Adorno, in the aftermath of World War II, famously wrote that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” Yet he later revised this view, recognizing that silence was also a form of violence. Art after atrocity is not only possible, it is necessary. It does not normalize the horror, but allows for its formal engagement and ethical reckoning.
In addition to the role of the artist during the destruction times, it is equally vital to consider the perspective of the art viewer – the audience, the witness, the individual who may not produce art, but is nonetheless transformed by it. Times of destruction often bring new publics into contact with art who may never have previously considered its relevance. The pandemic, for example, introduced many people to visual art, literature and music not as elite pastimes, but as lifelines. For countless individuals, artistic experience became a first encounter with introspection, imagination, or even emotional clarity. In crisis, the role of the art lover emerges not as passive consumption, but as active engagement with meaning-making. This includes people who had long lived outside the orbit of museums or concert halls and suddenly found themselves needing poetry to survive sleepless nights or returning to painting as a form of psychological processing. The therapeutic and philosophical potential of art is not limited to its creators; its audience, too, undergoes a kind of transformation.
Also another striking historical examples of the human need for art amid destruction comes from wartime Russia. During the Second World War, despite widespread famine, air raids and political repression, many ordinary citizens in Soviet cities such as Moscow and Leningrad continued to attend theatrical performances, even at the cost of basic necessities. It is documented that some people would forgo food in order to purchase tickets to the Bolshoi Theatre or small underground productions. This was not a matter of luxury, but of existential necessity. Theatre provided a rare space for emotional release, philosophical reflection and communal catharsis. It functioned as a psychological refuge, offering structure and narrative in a time when daily life was chaotic and uncertain. In a society wracked by war and ideological control, the stage remained one of the few arenas where complex emotions, contradictions and even subversive truths could be explored – albeit in coded form. This widespread public commitment to art, even in the face of starvation and trauma, underscores that cultural engagement is not merely the privilege of peace, it is a human instinct that persists precisely when survival feels most threatened.
In this sense, art becomes a shared space where both the maker and the witness participate in collective endurance. It is not only the artist who seeks to make sense of destruction, but the viewer who, through the act of attention, reshapes the ruins into resonance.
Today, as wars continue to reshape geographies and global polarization deepens, the question is not whether art is necessary, but how we support and interpret it. Cultural institutions, governments and educational systems must reconsider their priorities – not merely funding art, but understanding it as a form of social infrastructure.
In conclusion, destruction strips life down to its barest essentials, and in doing so, reminds us what those essentials truly are. Art, in all its forms, is not ornamental to survival. It is a record of it. A response to it. Sometimes, even a redemption from it. To study and read the times of sociatal chaos without studying art is to study only half of human history. The other half is how we endured it.
Courtesy: Dailysabah
