purpose of art
I'm away until Wednesday. Looking foward to participating in this very fertile topic.
Found a very good quote on this topic as I reread Lice, Rats, and History on the plane, but I the book's still in my bag (and overdue at the library). Will remember tomorrow, perhaps...
purpose of art
Glad to be back. As Joanne notes, the very topic of discussion--the purpose of art--is bound to lead us into the kinds of murky intuitions seen here. I particularly like LW's use of extroversion and introversion as a general, and working criterion, for the categorization of artists. For example, it clearly distinguishes painters like Morandi (introverted still lifes) and Schnable (extroverted what nots). If this topic continues, I would like to see other intuitions expressed, however murkily--it's the responses to them that may be of most value.
Welcome back, JL.
True, we can put some murky concepts out there but if we keep discussing it, the waters may clear. The introversion or extroversion element is the aspect of a work of art that I notice first although so many works seem to be introverted viewpoints, there's a way the image sweeps through one's mind and produces an intellectual and/or emotional response.
A sad, rather macaber story about what isn't the purpose of art:
Suicide mistaken for art
[Some notes about the "Tacheles":
"Tacheles is synonymous with Berlin's infamous alternative scene. Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, hundreds of clubs and bars sprang up in the old, disused buildings which proliferated in East Berlin. Many of these makeshift establishments were little more than flashes in the pan, falling victim to stringent regulations aimed at cleaning up the city. Tacheles, however, has defied all attempts at relocation and remains as a potent symbol of the Wild East.
The building itself used to be a Jewish-run department store before being shut down by the Nazis and bombed during the Second World War. And it is from the Yiddish for "let's get down to business" that Tacheles gets its name.
In the months after the fall of the Wall, squatters moved into the ruined building and established an alternative commune. The squatters have long since moved on, but Tacheles remains as a centre of alternative culture. The complex boasts several art exhibitions, a cinema (Camera in Tacheles), a bar (Café Zapata) and holds parties and concerts all year round. The craterous garden behind the building is definitely worth a look."
website [in German]:
Tacheles ]
....I would like to see this discussion continue, interrupted as it
was by the festivities......there is so much here that is still left unsaid.....
......What is it about temperament that would propel a group like the Impressionists to record such uplifting and inspiring work? Many
of them were touched by personal difficulties, but they didnt seem to
dwell on them.....
....
art
Shepaints, if we continue this train of thought, particularly the notion of artistic temperament, I would personally focus on aesthetic taste (not that this would be the best focus). This may often have to do with psychological factors such as extroversion and introversion (suggested by LW), or it can be very much a question of aesthetic taste, as seen in the contrast, for example, between minimalist and baroque-ish constructions. I have always wanted to do something very pale, minimal and with a narrow range of values, but virtually all my
efforts end up pretty heavy with strong value contrasts. The task becomes very complex because, in my case, what I like in some of my works, I may not like in others' work (even though they may be similar). And conversely, what I dislike in some of my work I may like in other's work. I like swaying lines/shapes moving diagonally across the canvas with an obvious rhythm, yet I love to see geometrical, standing-still forms in other works (I just finished one like that recently, and was SO pleased, not because it was good but because I could do it). It would so nice if we could collectively come up with a better term than "temperament". Words like aesthetic taste or bias and artistic style, come to mind. I'll bet there is more likely to be a french word for this.
JL....I trying to recall the 4 temperaments that the Greeks? Romans? someone! ascribed to humans in ancient times....
melancholic sanguine....etc.....
By the way.....British painter Gwen John used tones that were in such a close value range that her brother, Augustus, was said to "to peer
fixedly" at her work. Against the dark grey of her skirt for example,
somehow with a miniscule value change, a cat would emerge, barely distinguishable from its surroundings......
Found it......
http://hsc.virginia.edu/hs-library/historical/antiqua/textn.htm
Ancient medical classification of humors and temperament
humors
Shepaints, what value could these four humors have for us in our discussion of artistic temperaments? I'm trying to think of them as metaphors for artistic dispositions, but without much success. A painter can be "sanguine" (blood) or hostile (bilious), or phlegmatic (low key). But even if this were not silly, what would we do with it?
Yes, it is rather useless.
I think art is in the eye of the beholder much like beauty is.
Art, for me, serves to give a shock to the spirit otherwise apt to be dull, and to reformulate it in the higher level.
Its role, thus grasped, is not concerned with whether the theme is religious or secular.
art
Wow, Algis, never looked at it that way before.
I think the purpose of art is to defy death.
for non-artists it's purpose is to create standards for cultural evaluations.
For art galleries it's to make money
For morons; it's something to make fun of
art
Wonderful, Colorific. I would add, however "to defy the LIVING death."
It's been said and heard about art being a celebration of life; of mirroring life. I wrote in my bio for a theater program that art is "...the force of life itself manefest through concrete materials.." So I intuitively have faith that art, a convergence of spirit and materials via disciplined process, serves like a "film-still" of a life. (successful influencial art, great art..another matter).
I suppose I can accept that this is a defiance of "living death" JL; but at the risk of perhaps sounding like some flakey loon I can with utmost deadpan seriousness testify to this fact of my own artistic experiences: There is a purity of spirit that can be attained; it's devoid of all man-made worries and woes of our society and forms of mind control. At times I see this as Holy, something God-given; perhaps a type of enlightenment; in the creative process. It is touched , maybe guided by all encompassing universal truth, by a source far above and beyond any individual's deliberate, mortal, conscientious mind. It's what remains within the work after the artist has perished, and gives it life, presence, beyond the obvious content and grabs the viewer in their humanism. It was With Van Gogh when he painted "Starry Night" and "Crows Over A Wheatfield" and with Picasso when he painted "Les Desmoiselle D'Avignon"; when Goya painted "The Third Of May, 1808"; Klimpt's "Death And Life"; and ricochetted throughout art history touching many, many artists's visions. And I'll dare to say mostly touching ARTISTS' visions; those who recieve that uncanny "he/she was SO ahead of their time!" The art That is blessed with "Staying Power" Universality and timelessness ascends to this realm. So I will humbly state: yes, that art will most ceretainly defy "living -death" but I have been convinced from the cliffs near the turbulent sea, the silence of the woodlands, mountains, the sunrises on misty pristine red- violet lakes, sunsets illuminating the damp glistening sand-bars; and the so many skies I can't begin to remember all of them, clear, clowdy, pearly grey, opulescent blue, Pink Orange and Magenta voicing the chorus of chromatic clear omnipotent reality while racing arrows of time shoot through me into the next moment; the pure undisputable facts of beauty (that most of society arrogantly contradicts); yes my friends, I have been convinced there is a defiance of actual mortality somewhere in it all. Perhaps Defiance is not the right word; perhaps it is something beyond death that can affect the creative conscience, and find it's way into some artworks. Perhaps it is something defying our mere mortal lives, coaxing us through corporeal beauty, through our artists to go beyond our trivial superficial smallness. To go beyond all the lower concerns that keep us hating one another, competing over material things, building walls instead of bridges, and the uncountable miserable cycles of destrution, tiny and mamouth, that we all see but numb ourselves with our electronic toys and conveniences.
But it is there and it has been felt by many an artist, and it defies not only "living Death"; but I believe, mortality itself because it remains manefest in the human spirit preserved in the works of al those artists who willingly or not caught it's essence and left it behind like a light "Spiritual Footprint in the dessert sands" of the endless timeline beach of man/womans' relative affect on one another.
art
Holy indeed, Colorific. I hope to someday feel it as clearly and intensely as you do.
