Cute Art, Playing on the greatest of human emotions.

           In 1996 an act of warmth, compassion, and love challenged our views of what makes up the most primal of emotions. In that year a small baby fell into a guerrilla's cage at the zoo, where it was gently picked up and cradled by a female guerrilla, kept safe until the keepers could come in to get it.   

           There is something within each of us that makes us go awe as we look at something cute, a cute baby, a puppy, squirrels, or even baby elephants. Many artists who initially began their career creating for children have found that adults often like their work more then many children. People simply associate cute art as being especially for children because children are cute as well; however it is parents and adults who connect with the visual cuteness and appeal of children more.

            The enjoyment of the cute is not limited to humans some animals it would seem can also have this reaction, the cute reflex; we have all heard stories of a cat raising a rat, a gorilla raising a kitten. It would seem that the feeling we get when we look at something cute is a deep rooted and primal emotions running for generations and spanning time through evolution. Such feelings are the best of us, the best of nature the highest of all emotions for it is these things that allow us to love, to care for each other and to survive.

            Cute art are those works of art those human creations based on pushing such deep seated emotions, on altering human’s perceptions and the human mind to portray the most important part of the human experience. Certainly in many ways this is what much of art has historically been about but the movement of cute art from Japanese Chibi art; to Precious Moments is much more then simply discovering human emotions as it is playing off of our most positive selves.

            It is no wonder then that such movements can become endemic to a society defining the collectors industry from Beanie Babies to American Girl or Hello Kitty we have seen many cute arts become part of what our society is. Far from being silly such movements help not only show how powerful our instinct is for love they help our society fill that need for warmth, love, and the other higher emotions.

            Cute Art is just as important as any other form of art and as the Art Nouveau movement showed art that décor and ads are art just as surely as anything hung in a museum, making even the most mass produced items works of art. Such works of cute art are good for adults and children alike, for adults they provide a sense of beauty and joy for children they can help raise and cultivate in them the positive feelings they portray in children.

            Despite how important and emotionally provocative cute art has been, it has failed in general to ever have its own movement, however such a movement is necessary both to help build respect for those who create cute art and to help push forward the art form itself. It is through a cute art movement then that we could finally both visually and philosophically understand the highest of human emotions, the ones that make us go awe when we see something cute.