Does Art Serve Any Purpose?

[Fyodor]

From Einstein's essay "Cosmic Religion:"

"How can this cosmic religious experience be communicated from man to man, if it cannot lead to a definite conception of God or a theology? It seems to me that the most important function of art and of science is to arouse and keep alive this feeling in those who are receptive."

[stlukesguild]

whereas I can see the need to aquire the language of mathematics in an advanced society I don't see any reason to aquire the language of painting or poetry or music.

Then that's fine. It's beyond you. Art is an elective affinity. You choose that it is important to you... or not.

I would argue that you're actually looking at art the wrong way by saying that its basically confined to some mental process or spiritual realization in the viewer. I think it would be more accurate to look at it as something that one applies in a shared cultural dialogue in his/her everyday life.

The work of art is a creation of the artist. Some artists embrace a utilitarian purpose for art. Others fully reject the notion. As an artist myself, I vehemently reject the notion that art SHOULD be anything other than that which the artist wishes it to be. Certainly, art involves a dialog... between the art work and the audience, but as Oscar Wilde recognized, "It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors."

If it isn't doing that than what's the point?

And how do you measure the success of failure of a work of art to engage the audience?

If I went and got my bachelor's in English how many people would I be able to talk about Ezra Pound with? By contrast, if I see a movie or watch a baseball game I can apply that in any number of given situations with virutally anybody I meet.

And thus you assume that the number of individuals who embrace a given experience are somehow a measure of relevance? I could go on and get a PhD. in astrophysics and how many people could I hold a serious discussion with as to worm holes or the space-time continuum?

That's why I brought up the totem pole. The totem pole would've been understood by everyone in the tribe insofar as they could refer to it and use the stories it told in everyday life - it was part of a shared cultural language. Whereas, say, Michaelangelo - how relevant is that to anyone in the 21st Century?

How many could identify the artist, the tribe, the period in history from which a given totem pole was created vs Michelangelo's David? And again... how is this at all relevant? More people listen to Lady Gaga than Schubert, hence Lady Gaga is more "relevant" than Schubert? Relevant to what?

I mean, awareness of other views and places - this can just as easily be accomplished by a newspaper as anything else. Consciousness of the existence of other cultures was achieved through advances in printing and communications and also increase in literacy. It didn't really have anything to do with exposure to art at all.

Really? And yet we see just how much of an understanding the majority have of China or the Middle-East based upon the media.

[stlukesguild]

I'm saying its not valued because it's irrelevant - not because people made a conscious decision to just not care about art. What would be wrong with courses on film or sports - activities that are far more relevant to the vast majority of people primarily because these are activites that people have been indoctrinated in and have already aquired an familiarity with without having to think twice about it. Why would you teach a class on Raphael? How is that relevant to the cultural lives of Americans, or Brits, or Germans for that matter?

Again with "relevance". You are assuming that the purpose of art and culture is to reinforce our own standards, beliefs, values, experiences, and prejudices. If anything, its worth is quite often the reverse... it opens the audience up to endless other possibilities.

[Rores28]

This question has sort of morphed as you've gone along. Your initial question was what's the point of art. Most obviously for pleasure, just like sports, or food (beyond sustenance), or sex (beyond procreation), drugs etc..

I think that question was just meant to be polemical and your real question now is why in school? But its not why art in school, its why the visual arts and literature in school, I believe. And even then your asking why study old visual/literary art. The practical value of disciplines like graphic design and website design must be obvious to you, as I'm sure is the general study of the written word.

Is this right... sorry I just want to make sure before I answer your question, which seems a bit nebulous at the moment.

Also I suspect this is a pseudo troll job. I think you have some paper due on this topic and are phishing for discussion here.

[Rores28]

Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us,–for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

Holy ****. SLK you just blew my mind. I've only gotten chills I think reading 3 or 4 authors before, (Shake, McCarthy, Dostoevsky, and maybe Great Gatsby) and now its 5. I think I'll be picking that book up the next time borders has a good coupon. Is the whole book that good?

[G L Wilson]

The postmodernists destroyed the old guard and replaced it with a new one. Art is eternal. It precedes existence.

[JCamilo]

This question has sort of morphed as you've gone along. Your initial question was what's the point of art. Most obviously for pleasure, just like sports, or food (beyond sustenance), or sex (beyond procreation), drugs etc..

Well, pleasure is not the main function of sports (rather, physicall prowless function is power. Then health... Food main function is sustainance, not pleasure. Sex is reproduction ,not pleasure. Obviously, the obvious is lost. Art is more obviously used as medium to store and develop human knowledge and culture. Pleasure is an accident.

I think that question was just meant to be polemical and your real question now is why in school? But its not why art in school, its why the visual arts and literature in school, I believe. And even then your asking why study old visual/literary art. The practical value of disciplines like graphic design and website design must be obvious to you, as I'm sure is the general study of the written word.

The question is a motto today:those disciplines grant professional formation just like any other. As literature, the most powerful technology of humankind is the written language. So, sharring the literature is somehow a democratic ideal. Of course, the science of schools is also not pratical. You do not became a scientist from it, so why science? Or why history? Why anything but cooking?

Btw, this discussion is kind off pointless. It assume that art must be useful.Or that people who manipulate art cannt find an use for it. Which is rather a false question. No social power happened without cultural power and art is necessary there.

[G L Wilson]

One thing the rich don't have is taste.

[Drkshadow03]

It seems like art arose out of a need to communicate ideas to non-literate societies. Sort of the way a totem poel told the history of a tribe to its memebers.

Now that everyone can read, what's the point really? Is there anything that art can express that can't just as easily be communicated through speach? Forgive me if I sound a little crude, but I've been reading about the ongoing debate about the role of the arts in public schools and I'm just kind of curious how you all feel about this. Does art really have anything to offer students? Should it be taught at the expense of mathematics and science?

For instance, why go to an art exhibit? What could that offer me?

Art deals with our most important experiences and problems (say coping with the idea of death or surviving poverty or entering into a bad marriage), but it deals with them in an emotionally, aesthetically, and intellectually stimulating way. This last part is key.

You can in fact deal with those experiences and problems in speech (which, by the way, only complicates matters since many famous speeches once written down become art). You can read an op-ed in a paper or an article and gain some of the same information. But when a novel or a poem deals with the same issues it does so through an aesthetic manipulation that hopefully allows us to see the issue in a completely new light, that at its best lets us see the issue in a way we have never seen it before and creates empathy for a fictional character's experiences.

Literary critic D. G. Myers has this to say of the matter (in relation to Huck Finn):

"A great novel is a disturbing comprehensive vision of the human experience. It persuades you, for a while, to watch the human parade from a weirdly angled window—to consider human life under the aspect, not of eternity, but of an odd and assertive particularity. This is what it means for a novel to be truly great: it changes your life. But not in any trivial self-improvement fashion. For a long time thereafter—if not forever—it affects the tone of every human encounter, the symbolism of every human gesture, the legitimacy of every human feeling. Even if you reject the great novelist’s vision, you are unable to shake the influence that it has upon the way that you view human actions.

No one who reads Huckleberry Finn can ever again use words like “nigger,” “humane,” “moral,” or “conscience” in the same way. And in that sense, Alan Gribben and his critics belong to the same fraternity of the fundamentally unchanged."

As St Luke has suggested art instills empathy for other times, other cultures, and individuals with different experiences than ourselves. I would add that not only doe it offer us a connection with others who are different and help us understand their experiences, but at its best, it can also reflect our own experiences back at us and remind us we're not alone in our problems and ordeals; there is someone else out there who has undergone the same trials and tribulations, who has the same experiences and faults and difficulties as us.

The reason to engage with art and to go to an art museum is because you enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it, then don't go. I think it's that simple. What does it have to offer you? The possibility of enjoyment. But more importantly it allows you that weirdly angled window (the artist's vision through their art) to view the world anew, to read a story and to come away from it looking at the beauty of nature in a fresh light or your relationship with your parents differently or recognize the social problems teeming all around us.

Not really. Art is highly specialized now. Only a few who spend years of study are going to understand whats going on when they go to a museum. Whereas everyone in the tribe would've understood what the totem pole meant. The point is museums and the like are irrelevant to the vast majority of people nowdays. Tell me where I'm wrong? Isn't this what Bakhtin was getting at perhaps? That the only relevant art form is the novel and that everything else is anitquaited - kind of like mental masturbation more than anything else?

Oh I don't know about that. Certainly we could take statistically significant polls to see if people claim that art is irrelevant to them. However, I've been to quite a few major and even 2nd tier art museums in my life, and they're almost always crowded as hell. When there was free admission on Memorial Day to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, for example, there was a line out the door to get in all day long. Art is highly specialized, but it doesn't mean one can't learn the language through formal or informal study.

[MarkBastable]

One thing the rich don't have is taste.

What does that mean?

[MystyrMystyry]

The point is the horse talks - not that it makes sense

[G L Wilson]

What does that mean?

Money doesn't buy you happiness, it buys you gross trinkets.

JCamilo said that no social power happens without cultural power and art is necessary there.
To me, art conveys nothing to an owner other than saying the owner has money.

[MarkBastable]

To me, art conveys nothing to an owner other than saying the owner has money.

Well, quite. It doesn't tell you, for instance, whether or not he has what you call taste. He might have; he might not. So even as a generalisation, 'the rich have no taste' doesn't really stand up.

[G L Wilson]

Well, quite. It doesn't tell you, for instance, whether or not he has what you call taste. He might have; he might not. So even as a generalisation, 'the rich have no taste' doesn't really stand up.

Have you actually been inside Buckingham Palace lately?

[Emil Miller]

Desire suggests knowledge in the Biblical sense. Bertrand Russell was about as sexy as his mathematics (no wonder he never got Aristotle).

Bertie was very sexy indeed, regardless of his mathematics.

Caroline Moorehead’s biography, Bertrand Russell, A Life (1933), states that his most enduring lovers were Lady Ottoline Morrell and Lady Constance Malleson but that he had slept with Miriam Brudno, Helen Dudley, Celeste Holden, Katherine Mansfield, and (probably) Barry Fox and T. S. Eliot’s wife, Vivienne.

His multiple marriages and controversial views led to his being denied a teaching position at the City College of New York (CCNY), for he was challenged by a parent, the Episcopal bishop, and the Roman Catholic hierarchy as one who likely would undermine the “health and morals” of his students.