What is art for?

[wombat1138]

This'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?

Comments

[recursive.livejournal.com]

I guess I see it as a tool for affecting people's minds and have avoided overanalysing it past that point. I suppose all of 1-5 are true.

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Well, that's no fun :b

Somehow, MarySue wish-fulfillment slipped my mind earlier, though it could probably be mapped into somekinda Venn diagram of the above. The meta-point for the whole tumbleweed (inasmuch as there is one) is really more about trying to figure out orthogonal axes to form a conceptual map of artspace, so to speak. Frex, Enya and Monet "feel" very similar to me as purely aesthetic blurs of prettiness without further meaning, likewise Magritte and Sondheim sharing some other subspace (precise craftsmanship of unsettling concepts), or Tanith Lee and Utena off elsewhere (decadent glamour, subverting societal norms).

Or from a more pragmatic viewpoint, it could be about identifying the different ways in which mind-control can be disguised as art, though again back to Enya and Monet, I have no idea exactly how their victims' minds are being affected beyond blanking out to "Ooo pretty"-- not that I hate those artists, but I seem to lack the receptors to fully appreciate them.

(Next week: dancing about architecture.)

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

Too tired to think/respond properly, but (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312101066/qid=1142435953/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/103-3556451-7358201?s=books&v=glance&n=283155).

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

Aha. Will have to check the public library for that or similar; thanks much for the ref.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

No prob. It's a very good & comprehensive collection and overview of the various isms. (Also, I sat through the editor's graduate seminar twice, and that, in an earlier edition, was the textbook.)

[recursive.livejournal.com]

Ahh, so you're looking for a taxonomy!

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

I guess so, though "taxonomy" still makes me think of branched cladograms rather than a multidimensional matrix.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

Or from a more pragmatic viewpoint, it could be about identifying the different ways in which mind-control can be disguised as art

One could reasonably argue that art is always a form of attempted (and reaction-specific) mind control.

[fujifunmum.livejournal.com]

For me, the response is personal and visceral. If the old adage of "I don't know about Art, but I know what I like" is true, there must be a corollary statement that what you "know" and what you "like" can change and evolve over time.

As to comparing and contrasting genres, it seems useful in a personal sense - perhaps in order to organize the "artists" in your mind/thinking? However, I must admit that I do not do that, and found the comparisons above to be......frightful! While I do not dislike either Enya or Sondheim, I find no trace of the exquisiteness that is Monet in either - nor would I link either to Magritte.

Perhaps the fault is my way of compartmentalizing. I do not link music with art, nor do I link dissimilar kinds of music with each other. Do I like Beethoven better than The Beatles? Why should I choose? I feel the same way about Monet and Rembrandt....why bother to compare them? I know it is a scholarly thing to do, and perhaps useful intellectually, but I perfer to "see" my art and my music with my emotions....left brained? (I can never remember which is which!)

Not that I disagree in any way with your 5 suggestions...perhaps I see all art as #3, pure sensory enjoyment? Maybe, but I enjoy art that isn't considered conventionally "pretty", too. Perhaps the Taste element is an overwhelming indicator for what we, in our individual decision making, even consider art?

More pondering needed...

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

[...T]here must be a corollary statement that what you "know" and what you "like" can change and evolve over time.

I would hope so, or we'd all be permanently up to our elbows in fingerpaint and applesauce :)

Dunno, I've got the variety of geekdom in which (over)analyzing stuff that I like is an essential part of the enjoyment. But I wasn't thinking in terms of setting up a rigid hierarchy of "I like Rodin's sculpture 3.2% more than season 3 of Buffy" but rather looking at different dimensions of achievement.

Of course, now I'm glancing over my shoulder at the modified-Dewey organization on our bookcases and will have to fight down the urge to reorganize our entire collection all over again. It's that pesky divide between Technology and the Arts that gets me every time, only slightly worse than back-and-forthing about whether Zen is religion or philosophy. The wombat-consort insists that it's philosophy, so since most of the Zen books are his, I let him decide where those go.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

It's that pesky divide between Technology and the Arts that gets me every time, only slightly worse than back-and-forthing about whether Zen is religion or philosophy. The wombat-consort insists that it's philosophy, so since most of the Zen books are his, I let him decide where those go.

Zen Buddhism, with the monks and the sutras and the statues & such, is a religion. Zen-as-an-applied-state-of-mental-practice is a philosophy. I'd say most religions have a philosophy of some sort at their cores, and possibly start as such (as Buddhism did), the accretion of all the baroque extras make them something other than just applied philosophy.

My 2% of a Universal Credit Voucher

[punkwalrus.livejournal.com]

Art (to me) is a nicer way of saying "territorial pissings." I don't say this like it's a bad thing; I believe that art is an exclamation of personal space and social standing that is legitimate and a necessary outlet for personal growth.

"This is ME!" it cries out.

I believe it comes from the same brain part as the ones that declared social rank, territory, possessions, and so on, and then evolved into the beauty that we appreciate today.

This opinion isn't popular with artists, but I'm an artist, and from what I have seen in other artists, it seems pretty accurate.

Well, sure, from the pov of the artist...

[wombat1138.livejournal.com]

...but what about why people might appreciate *other* people's piss? (Insert National Endowment for the Arts punchline here.)

Frex, what do Thomas Kinkade, Stephen King, and Steven Spielberg have in common? Well, yes, they've all made huge piles of money from their creative work. But how/why? (Which is not to say that they nec'ly have much in common after all, rather like asking "Why are the sky, cobalt glass, and jaybird feathers all blue?")

Three and a half months later...

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

Frex, what do Thomas Kinkade, Stephen King, and Steven Spielberg have in common? Well, yes, they've all made huge piles of money from their creative work. But how/why?

As artists (of whatever stripe), all attempt to create some not-preexisting emotional reaction in their audiences. I'd suggest that's what art is: the conscious attempt to evoke some feeling that one feels (or imagines) in someone else, even if that someone else is an imaginary audience. Which would make prayer and hissy fits (for example) forms of art, yes.

[qadgop.livejournal.com]

It strikes me that each of these roughly maps to a recognized literary/artistic "movement" or period--

1.) Literality: art as window/spotlight on the real world.

Realism & naturalism? (Zola, et al)

2.) Idealism/didacticism: art as street signs, directing us toward higher goals or corrupting us toward lower ones

Modernism? (Sinclair, Dreiser, social realism)

3.) Escapism: art as vacation, mainly for the purpose of sheer sensory pleasure

Romanticism? (Coleridge, Rimsky-Korsakov and all them)

4.) Interconnectivity/allusion: art as spider, connecting disparate threads from different directions into an unexpected web.

Postmodernism? (Pynchon, Melville-100-years-early)

5.) Explication: art as magnifying glass, intensifying the focus on something normally ignored.

Renaissance humanism? (Rembrandt, et al)

Something like that?