The Purpose Of Art

Of course it should read:

"A lot of Christian art nowadays is to be seen ..."

I've got a hunch that art serves a cognitive function. I think it strengthens our ability to think abstractly, to look at important elements of our lives (be they animals who play important roles in our lives, a la cave paintings, or social structures, a la novels and theistic religious art), and to make comparisons and connections between apparently unrelated objects.

And we just dig music, for some reason. Every culture on earth digs music. (Was thinking about that recently, too, as I played with the dogs. If you wave something back and forth in front of a dog's face, they always follow it. They don't seem able to anticipate where the thing is going to be next; that is, they can't anticipate the next event in a simple repetitive pattern. We can, and I think that's what rhythm is. Music helps us develop this, and it pays off in other aspects of our lives. Think about the way boxers move: they "dance.")

Hi, Walter -- I use the edit button when I find I screwed up some text. (Then nobody realizes you diddled on the carpet!)

Art is enriching to our lives, both emotionally and intellectually. Religion has inspired most of the early painting with a preponderance of portraits of the elite (I don't know how many portraits Titian painted). Rembrandt was one of the earliest to begin going off the charts in subject matter.
French impressionism became a naturalist art almost entirely without any religious context. Social and political subjects became one of Goya's prime subject matters. Art history is fascinating -- I have a book that parallels modern art with the history of the same periods with charts.

Phoenix - quite a thoughtful post! nd thanks for the topic, Walter. This is one of those "eternal" questions. Art must serve a purpose. Yes, or No? Should we vote?

I am of the opinion that the art is in the process of the creator. I know that the product or end result is "open" to at least the creator's reflections or to the perspective of viewers who both know and don't know a particular creator's intent. In that case, the art is what happens in the mind of the viewer. Do you like it? Do you find it interesting, or disturbing? Does it lead you thinking in other paths than you have travelled before? Does it remind you of something? Is it just that "it IS"?

Purpose I think is in the mind of intellectuallizing humans. Even the elephants who paint are somehow getting something out of it. What we think they get is unknowable. What I as an artist intend, may not be at all what is perceived. Oh, great mystery...

<looking around for Phoenix's thoughtful post... maybe Cobalt meant patiodog's?>

I like the hunch. Makes sense.

It could be a chicken-and-egg thing; that art comes from the way our brains are set up to process the world, rather than that art helps shape our brains. (Or it could be a nice little feedback loop...) We, as a species, crave order and pattern. I see art as a way of expressing this, from the earliest cave markings; from order and pattern, it's just a hop skip and a jump to the concept of "beauty."

(I love feedback loops; chicken vs. egg becomes an useless metaphor. Like language: we are innately wired toward language, but this must be developed through extensive play and practice, and it is not just the people with the best wiring, so to speak, who are most likely to pass on the genes for it but those who are most inclined to do something with it. As per usual, though, I'm now getting befuddled. I don't know how people do this in a their nonnative language...)

What I love about the cave paintings is how aliteral they are. Who's to say whether the painters were trying to be true to the form or not, but the expressive arcing line in the backs of (as I'm seeing in my mind's eye right now) the buffalo (or bison, or whatever they were) is gorgeous, a simple expression of the speed, grace, and power of the animal. A static painting expresses movement. So much more dynamic than those dumpy earthenware statuettes that get dug up every now and then.

The Paleolithic cultures, patiodog, didn't create only "dumpy earthware statuettes" (besides those cave paintings), but also some of figurines of depict elegant, slender women (besides, I admit other, heavy, corpulent ones). [Notable at the Lake Baikal area]

BTW: The invention of the bow is ascribed to the 10th millenniumBC, the Mesolithic Period (Middle Stone Age). Artistic development during this period is attested by a pottery fragment of a most expressive woman's face dating from the 3rd millennium BC and recovered from the site of Vosnessenovka in western Siberia.


Regarding this art as well as (most) of the medieval, I admire it, because it really could "tell" and still is 'art' - even for our 'modern', changed understanding.

Overexposure to a particular statuette, I think I've had...

And not that this isn't an accomplished piece of art. It's the lack of movement in it that was sticking in my mind.

patiodog

Some like this lack of movement, anyway

My "art" exists because I have to create it.I´m not trying to alter anyones values or perceptions in general.I just carve and people seem to enjoy what I do.Maybe it soothes their everyday.Who knows?

...Maybe the purpose and attraction of art from the artist's point of view is being able to create something coherent and unified out of an activity dependent on our sole direction, control and imagination....This is in counterpoint to the lack of coherence and the juggling of multiple variables that most of us deal with in real life.

In a practical sense art is a visual history of civilazation and as such is all the information we do have about some eras of time. The art in the caves at Lascaux for example.

ttp://www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/

Certainly before photography, art was a record of historical events, personages and landscape. After photography with the Impressionists, style became more important and it was the way an image was created on canvas or other substrate and technique. In each time, the purpose of art is the artist's own motivation to create. That it becomes entertainment and/or intellectually enlightening is in the showing of the work. The purpose should be the act of creating, not that it is created for an audience. We have a landslide of imagery these days created for an audience -- mediocrity persists and we get a lot of decorator art where one image begins to look like another. It's like a variety of fabrics for a sofa.

Well, I really like and underline that, LW!!!

The Constructivists would have argued that that's not a bad thing. (They might not have believed it, but they would have argued it.)

Interesting take on the question. My instinctive reaction to the question is to frame it in an evolutionary context (what is the purpose of art from the point of view of the species) rather than a personal context (what is the purpose of art from the point of view of the artist).

From a personal point of view, the reasons are manifold. There could be an urge to create, but this might also be concomitant with an urge to procreate -- that is, the individual may have discovered that artistic creation is their most efficient path to sexual recreation. Not that the artistic drive and the sex drive are necessarily unconnected.

It's very, though, that the folks who hold the pursestrings in the "art-for-profit" industry are largely unconcerned with the aesthetic value of the art, forgoing art appreciation for market analysis.

Ouch -- okay, underline the typos, too (went out to water the patio garden and came back to find I had to edit it -- looks like I've been drinking Bloody Marys this morning, but I haven't!)

patiodog - the art "industry" is now controlled by a mob of traget marketers who ultimately rely on a sharp salesperson in the retail venues. They could just as well be selling refridgerators. Then they establish the myth that the work increases in value when in fact it depreciatates as much or worse than anything else. Has anyone ever walked into a mall gallery and been almost immediately been approached by a salesperson who's only goal is to qualify you and close a sale? The sad part of that is, most of them wouldn't be caught dead with any of the artwork in their own home.

Here's my take on the subject:

Art is when image transcends information @ http://www.pbase.com/image/6645233

Ha! In just about any situation where large sums of money are required, salespeople don't approach me at all -- though they sometimes keep an eye on me. Yep, I've got unomneyed and ungroomed chic (and not like male models and Brad Pitt have, either; I've got the real deal).