What is the purpose of Art?
What gives art (literature, poetry, religious texts, visual art, music, etc.) its power over the human soul? Clearly, art never helped man to survive, except in a very abstract kind of way. It's more likely that we live in order to create art, rather than create art in order to live. So why do we create art, and why do we enjoy art?
Comments (83)
Not to drag up Berdyaev again, but he has, to me, the best word about art. I'll find a quote later when I'm at home. He says that the creative urge isn't trying to create art, but new being. Art is always a failure in this sense, because it can't create new being. What creativity births instead are symbols of the spirit at best, and calcified, lifeless objectifications of spirit at worst. As art becomes more and more life-like thanks to technology, we can see that urge to create actual being, and we can see it fail.
So, the power art has for us is humanistic in a sense because we feel our own spiritual potential when we create and experience art. It's powerful, because it's the divine element moving in us to create new being. And the symbols we end up with instead hint at the divine element in us; they nudge us; the best art always suggests a limitless potential, and we feel as if we're a part of this potential when we experience it; we don't feel like outside observers, we participate in the art itself. The audience is always fifty percent or more of the art.
Quoting Agustino
Yes, and any attempt at making an argument for this is just a juvenile projection of modern conceptions on the past.
Rather than art being a superfluous add-on whose function isn't clear, art is an integral part of the human enterprise. The mind that can paint a picture can also draw a map. The skills required in perspective drawing is part of the skill of navigation. The bard who can recite the people's myths in poetic form might also incite the people to action. Building a cathedral might seem to contribute nothing to survival except: what it takes to build a cathedral also is required to build a castle, fort, factory, mill, etc. What it takes to amuse the people with fireworks is also required to blast a lead ball down a narrow tube. Workers chanting can better coordinate their movements. Comedy can give release from the tedium of the day; it can also be used as a weapon (like savage travesties directed at a recently elected president, for instance...)
Are you saying that art is valuable because the same skills it requires are useful for utilitarian purposes as well? Why not just turn it around and say, for instance, "The mind that can draw a map can also paint a picture"?
Ok, I do agree with you on those points, on a basic level. I do think that art being valuable because "we enjoy it, find it refreshing, invigorating" is a starting point, but I don't think that answers the question of what it's purpose is. Those aspects are just results of our experience.
Art is a way to experience and express culture.
As a purpose it serves to reinforce your identity.
ART
Sometimes people can define art as a beautiful painting or a drawing hung on the wall of an art gallery. Dance and music are also great expressions of art. I envisioned art a few summer days back in everything that was everywhere. This essay is about what I saw and how I got there on that very special day.
I decided to go for a bike ride through the oldest and in my opinion the finest neighborhoods in the city, searching for the best flower garden. It was going to be a contest and I was the judge. I do not spend my weekends gardening nor have I ever judged a garden contest before. I also have never sauntered casually on my bicycle. Using it for exercise and mountainous speed ventures was the norm. It seemed a relaxing idea so out the door I went. Early in my contest I discovered a residential garden of such magnitude that it set the bar or standard that all other gardens would be judged. The garden had everything beautiful. It had color, shade, or shadow, design, and a place. It was clean and well manicured. It had meandering walks with areas for contemplation. I stopped for a while and saw the garden and its diverse vegetation as a piece or pieces of art. The rest of the day from there or then on became an art show. I saw artistic gardens and flowers everywhere. I began to smell the art, it was intoxicating. I started to see art in the design of homes too, and how the gardens were meant to complement each other. I saw it in entrance ways, stain glass windows, and staircases. There was art in the majestic tree lined streets. I eventually made it downtown to the river where everything drains including meandering bicyclists. Someone had designed the most unbelievable fountain with marble walkways and hanging baskets of flowers. I talked with a few bystanders in the art gallery I was traveling, and noticed they had art all over them. It was in their jewelry, hair style, clothes, and a smile that remains etched in my mind. I stopped in a café for some nourishment and also to come down a little bit. Unbelievably, the food was artistic, made by artisans in a dining room that defined decor in a unusual way. When I came back outside, I looked up and saw cotton ball clouds on a turquoise canvas, oh please stop!
I ended my trip or art show five hours later buying the best garden in the city a first place award. I see art much more often today and in many more places. Not like that special day but much more than I ever had. Art is in everything, and is made by everyone. Thanks to all the artists who create everything.
=
Yes! I know the sort of experience you had. I've had experiences like that.
No; art is culture. You have it backwards; art generates what we know as culture. So far, everyone in this thread except MJA is selling art far too short; sheepishly coming up with nice-sounding platitudes to try to reason away the confusion that is art. Art doesn't avail itself to abstraction and logical analysis.
Quoting m-theory
I don't get it, can you elaborate?
I said art can be an expression of culture but it can also be an experience of culture (the audience of art experiences culture the artist expresses culture).
I also mean that we develop our since of identity from expressions or experiences of culture.
It helps shape our view of our societies and our place within those societies.
My problem is this doesn't take it far enough. Art creates culture, it's not just an expression or experience of culture. Or, more accurately...one doesn't create the other, rather...art and culture are inseparably intertwined, or at least, they were in past ages. Maybe not in our age. The lines between art and culture are not clear cut. Saying art expresses culture assumes that culture is a thing that exists prior to art. This isn't accurate. Art isn't an expression of culture; culture itself is an expression. Art is primary, not secondary with regards to culture.
I don't see a conflict here.
To say that art is an expression and/or an experience of culture, in my view, is no different than saying that art is culture.
I am merely making a distinction between creating art and experiencing art.
I think art is a way to communicate culture, but culture can be communicated in ways that are not necessarily art.
Art can give us new perspectives on culture or of ourselves.
We can learn things about our ourselves and/or about society from art.
You touch upon something that I am not sure I agree with.
You say that art is culture.
If it were the case that our ancestors that had developed cultures also had art, I would agree.
But if art does not show up until the evolution of language then I would say that it art is not strictly culture it is communication about culture.
Fair enough on all counts.
Quoting m-theory
I hate to ask the annoying question, but - how do you define culture? I realize it's a hard word to define; I'm just asking for clarity.
Where do you get the idea that art doesn't show up until the evolution of language? Again, just asking honestly; are there studies? Maybe I'm just not aware of them. But, if so, how can culture exist at all prior to language? Language, to me, is our interface with reality and experience. Language is another element of humanity that is inseparable from things like culture and art. It's not so cut and dry that we can differentiate periods of time before/after language, and thereby before/after culture or art. This feels tangential to the topic, though. But any thoughts are welcome.
Quoting Noble Dust
Man that is a tough one.
I am not sure how it should be defined, the more I think about the more I am inclined to believe it has to do with language.
Quoting Noble Dust
Oh I did not mean to suggest that it does or does not, I was just thinking well what kind of culture did human ancestors have, did they have art?
When does art show up and is it about the same time language does?
If so I think it would be safe to say they are related
I thought it was an interesting question and the more I thought about it the more I thought that maybe culture was closely linked to language, I do not actually know if that is the case or not, I have not researched the subject enough.
Now wait a minute here... Art is something we create ; we get something out of something that we do that makes us want to do it again. Yes, "just results of our experience". What more is there, pray tell, than our own estimation of a purpose in something we do? Is there something more to a bicycle than our estimation of what it is good for, like transportation or exercise and the usefulness that we identify in riding a bike rather than walking or riding a horse? No, there isn't.
If you think there is something above and beyond our own estimation of the value in something that we do, then you need to come up with that something PDQ. Art doesn't have an existence outside of human activity.
But by creating it, do we even know what it is that we're creating? Often times, no.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Agreed, except we seem to have different estimations of the purpose of that thing we do, namely art! And here we have a fundamental problem with art; it's definition...
Or, similarly, an agreed-upon consensus of what exactly it is that we're doing when we "do" art...
Quoting Bitter Crank
Correct, but this analogy is misused. Art is not to humanity as a bike is to the rider. Humanity is not riding the bike of art for the sake of getting from point a to point b. Art is as much the rider as humanity is.
Quoting Bitter Crank
What is PDQ?
Quoting Bitter Crank
True!
PDQ = Pretty Damned Quick.
Quoting Noble Dust
Yes, I think we do. Now, whether somebody else LIKES IT is another matter, and quite often people who don't like something are unwilling to call it "art".
Quoting Noble Dust
It's not a problem. We can have different estimations of the purpose of art. That's fine, and we can define art however we like. Besides, Marcel Duchamp -- that TITAN of ART who entered a urinal in the 1917 Armory Art Show in New York City -- said that "If you call something art, then it is art." So that settles it. Art is whatever you think art is.
Duchamp wasn't a nit wit; he was putting the art world on with his signed 'found art' urinal. He also did interesting paintings and assemblages.
We can dither over the preferred definition of art till the cows come home, as if there were clearly drawn lines around what "must be art' and what "can't be art". "Art" is by definition open ended. You can't have art AND a closed ended definition. As a structural member, a piece of steel is a closed-ended object. It either meets formal structural standards, or it doesn't. As a sculpture, a piece of steel is open ended: it has no formal standard to meet. It doesn't have to look like anything in particular; it doesn't have to do something; you don't have to like it. If Joe Blow made it as an art work, then it is art. Don't like it? Fine. Don't look at it.
There isn't any grand mystery here that hasn't been uncovered. Stop looking.
No, it's not this simple. So often, the artist isn't aware of how the audience will interpret the art. Dylan was confounded by how deeply his audience interpreted his lyrics. Now, who's "right" here? Dylan, or the audience? No one is "right".
Quoting Bitter Crank
Agreed in that I don't think a definition of art has much importance, but Duchamp was just as much concerned with his concept of the "4th dimension", which is analogous to Berdyaev's comments about art being an attempt at creating new being that I mentioned earlier, which no one has addressed yet. The important thing about Duchamp isn't the concept that "art is whatever you think it is". This was Duchamp's concept, but the art world is lugubriously slow-witted to understand how concepts affect culture. What happened with Duchamp is that he killed the establishment of the art world as it existed and ushered in an age of soulless art that has no referent. Countless artists surely followed suite, but the important thing about Duchamp isn't that Warhol now could make art; Warhol wasn't making art in the same sense that Monet was. The result of Duchamp is that the creative urge in humanity moved away from art, and turned to technology. The result is that the art world turned into a meaningless elite cash cow, because, since anything was art, anything could cop a premium price, as long as the buyer was sufficiently duped (along with the rest of society). Duchamp was great exactly because he disrupted the art world as it stood; now adays, the art world is utterly irrelevant because no one has challenged Duchamp at his game. This is because the art world doesn't possess the same cultural power it possessed in 1912, and so there's nothing much to challenge. The fundamental problem today with the traditionally held view on post-modern art is that Duchamp's work (although he's actually under-appreciated academically) is viewed as still canonical in a way, whereas what's needed is a new challenger. Consequently, Duchamp's legacy lives on in technology, not art, and, necessarily, if in technology, then also in consumerism, and if in consumerism, then ultimately in a banal, meaningless application of creativity towards "the market". This is the "art" world we live in. We don't live in Duchamp's world of "anything is art", we live in the The Market's world of "anything that sells on a TV commercial is art." What contemporary artists can you name that faithfully soldier on in the wake of Duchamp's legacy? The only one I can think of is Makoto Fujimura, who superseded abstraction by connecting it back to traditional Japanese Nihonga, thereby redeeming a lifeless art form and breathing new life into it. Check out my profile pic for a taste of his work. But, unfortunately, Fujimura moves in the irrelevant high art circles that have increasingly less and less influence on culture.
This is an interesting point. Note that man is probably the only animal who is an artist in the real sense of the term. We painted before we really developed language. Men in caves painted. That is a tremendous difference between man and animal.
But this is most certainly not all from the perspective of the audience. For the perspective of the creator of art, this makes sense - they seek to create something. But from the perspective of the one who experiences art, this doesn't explain much. What effect does art have on the soul? They aren't creating new being. So what enthralls them about art? Why did, for example during the Renessaince, rich patrons of art use a large share of their family fortunes to finance artists? Why did cave men paint, and other cave men regard and care for their paintings?
I think Schopenhauer is closer here, in that art gives a quietus to the striving of the will.
My apologies for blithely stepping into a subject area about which you know a great deal more than I do. Thanks for the very interesting comments.
Quoting Noble Dust
I don't think we should sever the text from authorial intent, but people do this all the time -- use a text, a sculpture, a melody, almost any object -- and project onto it whatever they feel or think, like a Rorschach image. Is that fair game? Well, sure -- as long as they don't claim to know more about what Dylan meant than Dylan himself.
The arts have done well in this past century up to the present moment. There are many outstanding works of drama, music, literature, opera, sculpture, poetry, fabrics, film and photography, painting, etc. produced in the post-Duchamp market economy. All of it great? No, of course not. There has been a good deal of awful stuff turned out across the board. Has more rubbish been produced in the 20th century than in previous times? Maybe -- there are more people producing than in previous times, and with less elite control over what gets done.
Maybe it is rooted somehow in perceptual recognition of safe versus dangerous environments, although aesthetic reactions don't map to that very well. So I don't know.
At any rate, once we can answer the question of why aesthetic reactions to phenomena arise, why art moves us is an easy issue. It's simply a matter of people (artificially) creating forms that engender aesthetic reactions.
There's not an answer to that anyway. The question is flawed because is presupposes that there are things like universal purposes.
The Berdyaev stuff you were talking about in the earlier post is an example of the fallacy of trying to squeeze widespread behavior into a unified interpretive template.
Speaking of Art* as a movement of aesthetic works throughout history, is different than speaking about a particular work of art**. The stated purpose of a commissioned work of art**, may or may not match up with Art*s expectations, thinking of Lucian Freud's portraits. But his works become accepted because they opened up new territories in aesthetic taste, they unveil new possibilities which enable and continue the development of Art*.
That's just it, beginning with the assumption that it needs an evolutionary reason to arise is a fallacy.
Beginning with that fallacy always leads to wild conjectures like this:
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting Terrapin Station
Have you studied much art?
Well, I guess I'm speaking as both an artist and audience member. But I was talking from the perspective of an audience member there - as I said, as the audience, we participate IN the art itself, in the best works of art, anyway. What I'm saying is that the process of creation continues in the experience of the audience. The more profound experiences you have as an audience member are instances where you participate more deeply in the creative act; you feel closer to the artist or the work, or a feeling for divinity or infinity, or something along those lines. Think about it; where exactly does art "exist"? In the artist's mind? No, because the idea is never quite communicated in the way the artist first envisioned it. Art primarily exists in the experience of the audience.
Quoting Agustino
Personally I think it's that taste of participating in the creative process by experiencing.
Quoting Agustino
There's always a spiritual quality in art; Historically, art and religion are inseparably linked. If you want to develop some understanding of art, the creative urge, and aesthetics, you have to have a developed understanding of religion, myth...a balanced understanding that doesn't just dismiss them as something that was once evolutionarily beneficial and now is not. This is where Terrapin Station is going wrong; he's not approaching it from a spiritual angle.
None necessary! I appreciate the discussion.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, this is a contentious topic to me. On the one hand, I appreciate that the gatekeepers are in a sense gone, but I think, as the bell curve of technological innovation quickens, we're already leaving that golden age of internet freedom where anyone can become a youtube star (was that even a good thing anyway?). I would venture to say that the elite control over art today is the Market itself. The Market is the gatekeeper on creativity because all creative fields are subject now to The Market (except the fine arts, which are now just isolated self-referentially academic disciplines - see articles on the creative writing MFA, etc). The most creative fields today are in technology, which is just another slave to The Market (everyone has to have the new iphone). It's billed as technological evolution for the good of Mankind (a sort of optimistic humanism), but in reality it just feeds the ever-bloating Market. Creativity is enslaved to Mammon in our age. It seems to me that there are epochs in history in which a pure artistic expression makes its voice heard in culture, and then afterwards comes a period of cultural decay...
I think art is spiritually powerful insofar as it is an authentic response to being. If it is inauthentically driven by ambition, money, the desire for fame, then it will be tainted by mediocrity, and lessened by submitting itself to a market.
Art can be an expression of spirit; a direct product of living intuition. Unlike science it doesn't have to worry about being wrong.
Well, there's some phylogenetic beginning to aesthetic reactions--that much is undeniable. Whether it was evolutionarily selected-for or whether it was just a contingent development that perpetuated because it had no negative impact on survival-to-procreation is hard to say, but it's curious in any event why it would have developed and persisted.
Quoting Noble Dust
Half of my degrees are in the arts (music, specifically), I've made my living in arts & entertainment fields for decades, including that I do visual art on the side, and something like 90% of my friends are artists who work in various fields--music, visual art, film, performance art, choreography, literature, etc., and I've always been a voracious consumer of the arts. So yes, I've studied a lot of art.
Good stuff, I was only asking because it seems that we're coming at it from different angles. It made me wonder whether you were involved with the arts; I am as well.
I'm unconvinced that for artists to be motivated by money somehow taints what they do. There is much dreadful art produced from the most pure and spiritual of motives, and much excellent art produced by people making a buck.
Hmmm, I have to disagree. Show me an artist with completely pure motives and I'll believe it. Motives are a spectrum, not a binary "this or that".
I do think, though, that there is a purity in the creative act itself. It's like sex, you're not thinking about anything other than the act while you're doing it. It consumes the mind during the process. There's a purity of intension in creation itself. Artists with varying degrees of pure and not so pure motives are capable of entering into that pure creative act.
I can't see where your disagreement lies. You say there is (by which I assume you mean 'can be') a purity in the creative act itself. The purity of the creative act is precisely what I am saying can become adulterated by inauthentic concerns. What the artist thinks about or desires at other times is not as relevant or perhaps is not even necessarily relevant at all.
I don't mean "can be", I mean there is a purity in the creative act. I guess the creative act is maybe a bit of a nebulous concept. I consider it a purely spiritual phenomenon: Kairos entering Chronos. I consider it a divine phenomenon that occurs through the medium of a person. That's why I consider it to always be a pure act. But, maybe a distinction needs to be made. There is a lot of work that goes into trying to create something, and a lot of the work isn't the creative act itself. Maybe there are degrees of creativity, and the highest degree is a pure, divine phenomenon. I'm not totally sure.
Can you elaborate on your concern about inauthentic creative acts? What's an example? Are you bringing in a moral element to the creative act?
I was using "creative act" in a broader sense than you, it seems, to include any act of 'art-making'; whether it be writing a poem, painting, drawing, composing music, and so on. So, that I would say the creative act is authentic is perhaps equivalent to your saying it is a creative act at all, on account of its purity.
But I don't draw a necessary distinction between religious art and secular art. They are both equally spiritual, when authentic, in my view, just in different ways. I'm not sure if you draw that distinction yourself.
I would have to study art, because I seem to have approximately zero talent in art.
Rubbish!
Well, I'm also using it to at least include those things. lol. I'm a little bit confused.
Quoting John
Maybe? I see the act as an inner, generative, spiritual process that isn't a conscious process; it's not a process that is derived from or controlled by the intellect. So yes, I'm talking about a very specific, pure act or process.
Quoting John
No I don't draw that distinction; I agree with you here. My concern isn't about religious or secular art at all. As a "spiritual" (if not quite religious) believer, a lot if not most of my favorite artists happen to be atheists. Ravel for instance. It's of no concern to me because I believe that the things they expressed have a spiritual significance in the world. This is a key aspect to how I view the creative act: that divine process occurs regardless of any belief system of the artist, precisely because, as I said, the creative process isn't directly connected to the intellect in any substantial way.
Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I mean literally any old act of art-making at all. By 'creative act' I'm referring to the outward act, not the expression of a special inward state. I think the latter is what you mean by 'creative act' and that is what I would refer to as 'authentic creative act'.
I would agree with you that the authentic process is not controlled by the intellect, I would say it follows intuition. I also agree completely with your last passage.
Aha, that brings clarity. I think we're essentially on the same page here.
I'd note that I think all of your questions, including the title question, are asking different things. What gives art power over the human soul isn't the same thing as the purpose of art isn't the same as why we create art or why we enjoy art.
I'd also probably separate religious texts from art, saying that religion -- while it can be and is interpreted by artistic ways of understanding -- is a separate domain from art. We can make religious art, but religious texts are just religious -- they may have artistic qualities to them (like the Psalms, for instance), but in reading the Psalms from an artistic perspective we are not reading them from a religious perspective, and vice-versa. We can do both at once, of course, but they're different too.
I'd say art has no purpose. It does not derive its value from some higher goal. It is intrinsically valuable.
As to why it is intrinsically valuable -- why it has power over the human soul -- I would say I'm not sure. What could possibly serve as an explanation for, say, science or religion? Why does science have power over the human soul, why does religion have power over the human soul? While we can propose answers, it would seem to me that any answer would presume to know too much about both the human soul and its subject. It may be an informed and reflected upon opinion derived from much work, so it's worth listening to answers that people have arrived at, but I wouldn't say I have an answer and I wouldn't say any answer is knowledge.
As for why we create or enjoy art -- that seems to be pretty individual, from my point of view. But perhaps I don't understand the question. In answering "why" I'm thinking about what motives people have, and if that be the case then that is highly individual -- some people gain pleasure from creating/enjoying art, some people want something extrinsic to the art, some people feel a duty to create/enjoy art, etc. It would just depend on the person.
Exactly.
There are some artists who have no concern with making money from their work, but it's extremely unlikely that you've ever heard of any of them. Even people just publishing stuff online and making any effort to ensure that others are aware of it are likely to have at least a secondary motive of making money from their work.
Heck, just think about it this way (John and others buying into the mythical art/commerce dichotomy): if someone loves painting, or writing or playing music, or making films or whatever it might be, just how likely do you think it is that they'd say to themselves, "I'd rather work 9 to 5, five days per week as a computer programmer/carpenter/retail clerk/whatever and try to squeeze in a couple hours here and there for my art than make a living with my art and be able to do it full time"?
The "art market" is a whack job on people with more money than they know what to do with. It's a racket managed by the owners and buyers of art and the galleries and auction houses who have a great deal to lose by not overpricing all of the art they wholesale and retail. I suppose some artists benefit right away from this racket, but most of them don't seem to.
I'm going to exit the closet and declare that I like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Andy Warhol, et al more than a lot of the stuff I've seen in museums. (I've come to this liking late in life.) I liked the Luther portraits by Lucas Cranach and Company that are in the big German State Luther exhibit currently in Minneapolis (and two other cities before it goes back to Germany for the 500 year anniversary). It's a very plain but forceful portrait, solid background, nothing decorative about it.
Harlan Ellison has a great quote in his fine science fiction short story, "The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore: "It is not amazing that there is bad art. What is amazing is that there is so much good art everywhere." That's sort of my take on art--of all kinds. There are wonderful artists producing terrific music, great designs, architecture, sculpture, plastic and representational forms, dance, film, fiction, and so on.
The filthy lucre of the market makes the plenitude of great art possible and available to non-elite riff raff like me. The market giveth pure gold and miserable dreck alike. Of course there is a lot of crap on YouTube. That's not a fault of the market place or Youtube. The crap is the fault of ubiquitous recording devices, ease of up-load, and an open door. Let's keep it that way. It enables dissidents to put up unpopular screeds and philosophers to discuss dry topics, as well as enabling the not-overly-talented to display their not-too-extensive abilities.
Crap is the price of pure gold.
Haha you liked that too - that was a good book! :P
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filthy_Lucre:_Economics_for_People_Who_Hate_Capitalism
Ahh too late, you edited your post. It's quite a good book. From memory it has very interesting ideas as well, which don't apply only to economics. For example, it teaches that evolution isn't necessarily the survival of the fittest. For example, when trees grow in a forest, the trees which grow tallest, will take the light from the other trees, and hence the tall gene will get selected for. But tall trees aren't efficient - they consume a lot more energy carrying the nutrients through-out their whole body, than the small trees. The most efficient is the bush. So the "best" scenario is if they all remained bushes - small trees. But the small trees isn't the outcome that the "free hand" of nature selects for - unfortunately. Instead it makes less efficient trees beat out more efficient trees. And of course this same idea can be applied to markets, and so forth. Very eye-opening book.
It is used in the King James Version of the Bible. like here, Titus 1:7... "For a bishop must be blameless, as the steward of God; not selfwilled, not soon angry, not given to wine, no striker [hurtful], not given to filthy lucre;"
There have certainly been (later) famous visual artists who made very little from their work while alive, but Picasso isn't one of them. Picasso was quite well off. He struggled a bit in the beginning, of course, but at his death, he was worth at least $100 million in 1973 dollars.
I am very sorry. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you, but I meant to type "Van Gogh" not Pablo Picasso. Apparently I wished to impoverish Pablo. Van Gogh and Oscar Wilde both died broke. If this error resulted in losses, you may be eligible for financial compensation from somebody--maybe the owner of this website. Or maybe John D. Rockefeller, IV.
On the one hand, I wasn't aware that Picasso was rolling in cash; on the other hand, you may not be aware that Picasso did not paint starry nights.
Van Gogh
Saw this at MOMA, the colors were unbelievable, I have yet to see a reproduction that can match the colors in the original. I guess it was his pure black.
I disagree with this view.
Say you’re down emotionally. You put on a record that resonates with you. You now, after listening to the music, are again functional. This, I argue, is survival at work—and in a very down to Earth, non-abstract way. OK, I’m being overly laconic with this, but for this and other similar reasons I’ve never agreed with the dictum that art does not help humankind survive, i.e. that it holds no evolutionary function.
When you are true to the art you like, art will give you sustenance in the form of energy, hope, nerve, and strength, to list just a few conditions of a human’s being which are generally required for survival and health.
To address the possible argument that art severs survival only in a very abstract way, so too do language and maps only serve human survival in very abstract ways. Yet no one claims that language and cognitive models are not evolutionarily functional attributes that directly assist our survival. We don’t live to communicate or read maps nearly as much as we communicate and read maps in order to live. As with language and cognitive models, I argue that so too with art … just as long as you’re true to it; just as long as you’re being authentic about what moves you. Otherwise art becomes the emperor’s new clothes, and here its assistance in survival perishes.
In thinking of art in the broad sense you’ve specified, even rhetoric is a form of art, as is the art of storytelling over a campfire. High art may not be necessary for survival for the vast majority of humans. But the ability to convey truths through art that could not be conveyed through ordinary language, and the ability to relate to such expressions of truth, is—I strongly feel—nearly as important to human survival/health as is the air we breathe.
I grant that what I've stated isn't necessarily convincing, but I wouldn't mind exploring the reasons for the quoted premise.
Hi. While such an approach is hardly exhaustive, I would look at the religious "roots" of art. While some art became quite abstract, much of it seems focused on protagonists. These protagonists seem to embody in a sort of shorthand the values of a culture or subculture. I just watched a documentary on Spock (hence the choice of avatar), and he was summed up by admirers in terms of integrity and dignity. Stoicism obviously comes to mind, and perhaps stoicism is a "late" individualistic sort of "religion." Of course the many paintings of Jesus illustrate this more directly than Star Trek, but I approach the art that speaks to non-specialists (non-theorists?) in terms of incarnate values. With abstract expression and the like, perhaps the artists themselves become the protagonists of interest.
The act of creating and inventing certainly serves a purpose.
They're two of my favorite visual artists (I prefer Picasso, though, and Van Gogh wouldn't quite make my top 10; he'd be in my top 20 though). The Starry Night I've seen in person quite a few times. It's in the MoMA's collection and I live in New York City.
Van Gogh definitely didn't make any significant money from his work while he was alive, but I wouldn't say he's typical of a (now) famous artist in that. Most famous artists did quite well for themselves while they were alive. And historically, it was a matter of having rich patrons, often royalty.
Our predecessors spent a long time in the stone age without apparent innovation, invention, or creative product--at least as far as we can tell from the archeological record. Then around 40,000 - 25,000 years ago they emerged from a long static period--think Lascaux cave paintings, small carved figures, and more complex lithic tools.
I wouldn't myself argue that art has an evolutionary purpose -- we really don't have any way of knowing -- I'd argue for the by-product approach. Creativity wouldn't limit itself to tool making, hide scraping, meat cooking, or weaving; it would overflow into "pointless", expressive activity. Not without some more technology, of course. If a an advanced cave man is going to spread paint around on himself and the walls, he has to make it first--grind some stuff up, and mix it a bit, learn how to deploy it. If he's going to string some shells on a piece of fiber, he has to learn how to drill a little hole in the shell without wrecking it. And so on.
All that is required once we get to this point is enough time and safety to practice expression.
As time went on, all sorts of technology was created. For instance, someone, some modern group of people, figured out how to extract a very strong glue from birch bark, for instance. They used it to fasten points to shafts. Getting glue out of bark is a not-at-all-obvious process. Their method required innovation, experimentation, an understanding of several different materials, and the careful application of heat. From such technology can come more complex creative work.
It seems to me that one can approach art from different directions, such as the spiritual. One ought at least to recognise the distinction between the intellectual appreciation of art, the art object itself(or artefact) and the act of creating the art(or the artist).
The living(entity) is the artist,
The perceived is the artefact, the art object,
The realisation of the artefact as art by the living entity is artistic appreciation, or Art.
I liked your post except for that one word, spiritual. It has become a very "spongy" word, profoundly vague, indefinite, with no solid definition. I wish the word hadn't been debased by so much use to indicate something, but who knows what?
These are a couple of the photos produced as a result, I took hundreds.
Transcendent is a good word.
Hey I was in Liverpool too :) Perhaps we passed and didn't know each other for who we are.
I went to the Liverpool Tate and saw Tracey Emin's bed, which I like, and some prints of William Blake's. This is one, 'The night of Enitharmon's Joy'. I think these, and Gormley's 'installation', communicate something to me that is novel to me, arranging materials in a way that communicate this novel something, and through them the world makes more sense to me.
Blake: The night of Enitharmon's Joy
How are we able to know, to the extent we can know at all, that a phenomenon exists? The irreducible answer must simply be that we experience, or observe it. If we are unable to commonly agree on the nature of an experience undergone then the inference is that the phenomenon being experienced exists merely subjectively and is therefore one somehow peculiar to the idiosyncratic nature of the particular observer. Conversely, should we find ourselves able to commonly agree on the nature of a given experience, the inference then is that this phenomenon being experienced exists objectively.
With regard to this point, the view sometimes advanced that in principle ‘anything’ can constitute ‘Art’ would seem ambiguous. Does it intend to mean that there exists an objective general type of aesthetic experience the nature of which is in principle susceptible to common agreement but that the specific occasioning of the experience concerning a given object may be subjective and inimical to common perception, or does it intend that aesthetic experience itself can exist only subjectively?
The alternative perennially recurring question with regard to creative phenomena - ex: visual art, literature, etc. - “Is such and such Art?”, by in itself invoking the idea that there exists some objective criteria with regard to which the appeal on behalf of an object that it possess aesthetically significant characteristics could be commonly evaluated, directly implies both the idea that the phenomenon, ‘Art’, or aesthetic experience or what you will, exists objectively and also that the occasioning of the experience occurs in an objective manner.
These conflicting views then could in principle be arising from inaccurate observation. In order to advance the theory that Art exists objectively for instance, both with regard to the aesthetic experience itself and with regard to the occasioning of the experience, the logical precursor would seem to be to isolate and describe what constitutes the experience of this phenomenon with a view to obtaining a common agreement on the description. Otherwise, the debate could perhaps be compared for ex with one taking place among various scientists seeking to achieve a commonly agreeable description of planetary motions who yet were possessed of disparate tables of measurement concerning their observed paths!
The alternative that in principle no such commonly agreed description is possible surely then means the phenomenon doesn't objectively exist so that, as an artifice informing nothing of reality, it is, despite its psychological appeal, inconsequential.
(Of course, what it actually consists in is the means by which the nature of certain objectively existing phenomena - as exemplified for example in the, 'Spirit of an Age' - personally experiencable only as psychological concepts and so limited by individual pdychology and environment, can nonetheless be intellectually comprehended and thus commonly communicated.)
Yes, I also think so. :)
By the way John, you really need to read Berdyaev's The Meaning of the Creative Act! Very apropos.
Thanks Noble Dust, coincidentally I have just recently started it. As with other books of his it resonates with my thoughts, and I often feel like it is giving voice to my own half-formed intuitions.
:)
I was about to order that, so after you get into it properly, let me know how good it is on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is indispensable :P
Appreciation of art, like that of reason and of service, even humour, is the daily bread of such beings and is foundational in the development of creative agents. So in a real sense art is the joy in the work of creative agency.
Art proves metaphysical reality
Right?? That's how I feel reading him as well.
Quoting Agustino
I give it a solid 9, for what it's worth.