Intellectual masturbation
Well, if I'm thinking about our distant ancestors and why they did the art thing, I suspect it was just an integral part of their working out and communicating their knowledge of the world. Before written records, it was imperative that everything known be communicated from generation to generation. Arts helps us to do this, by putting knowledge in forms (like songs or dance -- or like certain artwork of aboriginal Australians which contains clues about the locations of sources of food or water or shelter) that we can readily recognize and respond to.
And for fun, too, and because it's wired into our brains to manipulate things and make new forms out of them. I would also imagine that very early artwork helped solidify group bonds and identity.
Ah, but I think art often if not always involves some sort of leap, not always expected in most communication, and often sniffed at...
Me, I like the art of food.
C.I., that's "art" in the broad sense of "craft"--I think. This would be a good thread all by itself. The NATURE of art. This would include its purpose and functions.
Osso, I'm not sure I know what you mean by "leap", but I suspect it has to do with the creative input of the artist. Right?
Patiodog is undoubtedly right. Art and artistic endeavor serve a lot of functions, educational, communicative, social, etc. . But I feel very strongly that we must not overlook the aesthetic impulse of mankind. It's ALMOST (don't take me literally) as if we have a beauty gene as part of our nature. And those humans who can live without beauty are lacking something very fundamentally human.
I think it's an integral part of our intuitive deconstruction/reconstruction of reality -- that aesthetic sense. (Though it's not necessarily exclusive to humans, certainly it is most highly developed in us.) It rewards us for remaking things, so we want to keep doing it.
Patiodog, I couldn't agree more. For us to "make sense" of our lives means more than just coming up with abstract formulas designed to represent the structures of life. We also want to "picture" our life to ourselves in positive (and this is complex) ways. That's why we call it "worldVIEW." To be able to make beautiful (not just "pretty") pictures of our lives is to make us fundamentally optimistic. I think it was Stendhal who said that asthetic experience is a promise of happiness. Who can hope for happiness when he lives only in insipidness and ugliness?
I'm thinking on an even more immediate level than that. That pretty thing makes my brain feel happy, so I'll do that thing I did to make it again -- same reason we like sex and salt.
O.K., Patiodog. I wouldn't deny the hedonistic dimension of art. But don't you agree that, at its best, it has a spiritual dimension as well?
Sure, absolutely. I'm not inclined to remove the spiritual from the animal, though, especially when I get an opportunity to look in the eyes of an imprisoned chimp or orang. We've got all kinds of kicks -- art, drugs, religion -- that may be as likely to harm us as to help us. I just see it as the way we're wired, but I do like crossing the wires myself and seeing what happens. I'm a monkey, after all.
(I have no idea what this shite is that I'm babbling. Sorry, folks...)
I don't know quite what I meant by leap, I just talk, ya know and hear what I say the same time you do. But, in the next post or two, JL, you mentioned the concept of promise of happiness from aesthetic expression, and with that I get back to my old thing about "fit", that beauty isn't necessarily pretty, mostly isn't, but does "sing" with, oh, aspects such as balance (or not), direction (or not), rhythm (or not), depth or flatness - anyway, that the qualities in a given piece work together in some apprehendible way. (How's that for blather? I like the word "fit" and riff on it differently every time I get around to thinking about it. But when I feel it about a piece, my brain lilts.
When the woman-person and I were in the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam a few years ago -- I've probably typed about this before -- we were having a hard time digging the paintings... and we both love the guy's paintings. Thing was, we were doing what everyone else was doing: walking around, peering at the brush strokes. So we took a break on an open stairway in the middle of a gallery (or whatever you call it), and looked around. And from there, about 30 feet from the walls, all of the paintings were exploding with color. It was a drab day, in a drab room, and these paintings were suddenly just radiant, living, so much more vivid than any of the people milling around them. Great.
Maybe it fit.
Can somebody explain to me why some art moves me to tears? It's happened to me when listening to classical music. It brings joy to the listener. I'm not sure how else to explain it. I also love to listen to singers like Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald and Karen Carpenter. I could listen to them for hours on end.
Speaking of Van Gogh, there was a special showing of his paintings at the art museum in Los Angeles several years ago, and my wife and I flew down to see them. I'm amazed at how the people who lived during Van Gogh's life missed his genius.
It prolly looks less strange to us, now, than it did to folks back then...
I'm curious about the cause of all the angst involved in making art. You know, the "agony" bit, as opposed to the "ecstacy".
I mean, painting, for example can be a very confronting experience. Any theories on this?
I don't have any theories on angst, re painting, I have always been engaged and energized by it. On writing as an art - I was just this morning reading a piece by Joan Acocella in one of the New Yorker magazine's rather fat New Fiction editions (June 14 & 21, 2004, a recent but not current issue) about the subject of Writer's Block. It's too long to be appropriate to cut and paste here, and I don't know if a link will work at this late date; I'll try. Very interesting article.
Oh, goody, here it is -
Joan Acocella's article on Writer's Block in NY'er
Thanks osso!
Will read later when I have more time.
BTW, I wasn't being flippant about the "agony" bit.
Osso, regarding the angst of painting, the existentialist therapist, Rollo May, contends that angst (for which there is no real translation in english: "threat"--which combines both anguish and dread--is probably closer than the weaker "anxiety") makes much of the concept of ontological guilt, in contrast to moral guilt (manifested in anxiety). As I recall, his "ontological guilt" pertains to the strength and quality of our sense of being. Are we fulfilling ourselves, our existence, or have we cheated ourselves, perhaps wasted our lives in not exploiting our potential? Is it possible that we take painting so seriously, and feel some angst when we confront a new canvas, because it speaks to our success or failure in fulfilling our potentiality?
