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What is art for?
Mar. 14th, 2006 07:45 pmThis'll be a bit sketchier than I'd like it to be; the subject has been tumbleweeding around my brain cell lately without actually snowballing, if that makes much sense, and there's a fair amount of blurriness among categories. Also, it's not directed so much in the sense of "What is the ideal function of Great Art?" as "What are the different things that art does, and how do you enjoy it best?"
1.) Literality: art as window/spotlight on the real world. Presumably this is the angle that hooked the readers of JT Leroy, James Frey, and Jerzy Kosinski; the viewers of The Blair Witch Project and Survivor; whatever the equivalent might be for the visual/musical arts-- it's not enough (or possibly even irrelevant) for something to be good in its own right; it has to be *true*. Verisimilitude (art as mirror) is probably closely related.
2.) Idealism/didacticism: art as street signs, directing us toward higher goals or corrupting us toward lower ones (hence hysteria about banning books and burqa-ing the nekkid tits of Justice). I suppose parody/satire might also fit into this category.
3.) Escapism: art as vacation, mainly for the purpose of sheer sensory pleasure (desserts, floofy pretty things, power ballads).
4.) Interconnectivity/allusion: art as spider, connecting disparate threads from different directions into an unexpected web. (Fireworks are pretty, but they also look like flowers.)
5.) Explication: art as magnifying glass, intensifying the focus on something normally ignored.
I'm probably reinventing the wheel here, but hey. Comments? Suggestions? More metaphors?
1.) Literality: art as window/spotlight on the real world. Presumably this is the angle that hooked the readers of JT Leroy, James Frey, and Jerzy Kosinski; the viewers of The Blair Witch Project and Survivor; whatever the equivalent might be for the visual/musical arts-- it's not enough (or possibly even irrelevant) for something to be good in its own right; it has to be *true*. Verisimilitude (art as mirror) is probably closely related.
2.) Idealism/didacticism: art as street signs, directing us toward higher goals or corrupting us toward lower ones (hence hysteria about banning books and burqa-ing the nekkid tits of Justice). I suppose parody/satire might also fit into this category.
3.) Escapism: art as vacation, mainly for the purpose of sheer sensory pleasure (desserts, floofy pretty things, power ballads).
4.) Interconnectivity/allusion: art as spider, connecting disparate threads from different directions into an unexpected web. (Fireworks are pretty, but they also look like flowers.)
5.) Explication: art as magnifying glass, intensifying the focus on something normally ignored.
I'm probably reinventing the wheel here, but hey. Comments? Suggestions? More metaphors?