As Noble Dust says, if spirituality in art is not respected, it implies that where an artist allows some kind of spirituality in art, they are wrong, mistaken, or harking back to a rejected paradigm. — Punshhh

I don’t understand this.

But "a higher purpose" whether there is actually a higher purpose, or not, is something which must be allowed within art. — Punshhh

What exactly is it you mean by “a higher purpose”?

So this was all, but obscurely
I felt the stirrings of new breath in the pages
Which all winter long had smelled like an old catalogue.
New Sentences were starting up.

The waking of a poem; a metaphor for his life; the fake poet, not a poem, waking up to the truth.

But the summer
Was well along, not yet past the mid-point
But full and dark with the promise of that fullness,
That time when one can no longer wander away

Time was moving relentlessly. Evidence of ‘that time’ to come, no more faking it.

And even the least attentive fall silent
To watch the thing that is prepared to happen.

Everyone will see it, the inevitability, the truth.

A look of glass stops you
And you walk on shaken: was I the perceived?

A mirror image of myself, is that really me.

Did they notice me, this time, as I am,
Or is it postponed again?

Did others see the real me, not the man in the street, but the fake poet?
Or is the moment put off, again? Did I get away with it again?

The children
Still at their games, clouds that arise with a swift
Impatience in the afternoon sky, then dissipate
As limpid, dense twilight comes.

Though nothing’s changed, things are the same, no one noticed. I still hide, as I always have, but for how much longer?

Only in that tooting of a horn
Down there, for a moment, I thought
The great, formal affair was beginning, orchestrated,

For a moment I thought something was happening, some connection with reality, the moment, life, this dance,

Its colors concentrated in a glance, a ballade
That takes in the whole world, now, but lightly,
Still lightly, but with wide authority and tact.

A moment revealing the world, the world itself, stealthily, skilfully revealing itself like a poem, the real poem I’m after.

Has there been art that is not meant for emotional communication? — Susu

The obvious one would be the Cubism developed between Picasso and Braque.

Has there been art that is not meant for emotional communication?[/

Marcel Duchamp.

Finnegins Wake — Susu

The question to be asked first is, where are we going, because that’s where art goes.

Edit: unless it’s severely controlled like Communust Russia. But then it simply reveals the Russian zeitgeist.

And if you then react to trends you don't like by, for instance, trying to create an aesthetic you do like, then you're one individual contributing to that process of art reflecting the human situation. If you're a hobbyist, you may not influence it much, but if you become successful, you might. — Noble Dust

Only a particular kind of work can find itself acting as a mirror. To mean anything it has be seen, it has to make itself known. It’s something about the artist’s obsession that drives the work, that creates the noise that gets it the attention. It’s no place for shrinking violets.

Edit: I don’t want to get mystical, but it’s almost like the art finds the artist.

I agree that for art there is an aesthetic hierarchy like the spiritual hierarchy in religion and that for art over the historical period of civilisations art has been largely controlled and has mirrored this hierarchy. Meaning that we have inherited an aesthetic of high art, which has a pinnacle, a godhead at the top, inhabited by great artists who have the greatest, most noble moral and philosophical considerations at the front and centre of their great work. Leonardo Da Vinci being the archetype. — Punshhh

This hierarchy as you called it did control art with its aesthetics. For many years it reflected religious and social mores about morality and beauty. These were the vision and creation of God, about God’s world on earth. All art reflected God’s vision. Morality existed in beauty, beauty was a set of aesthetics, morality was aesthetics, God set down morals for man to live by. Art had to be created in that sense because it could be nothing else, it could have no purpose.

Philosophy challenged God’s existence. Man now created and it wasn’t by the rules of God’s vision, it didn’t require rules about perspective, colour, replicating life, good and bad, beauty or horror. It was a totally free act and it was all man’s. Now he could create whatever he could imagine. This is a primitive act, driven by primitive impulses. Mysticism is part of it in the fact that it’s a primitive action. But I would not call it mysticism. I think that confuses things, as if art has a higher purpose.

All cases of what people call art is a form of emotional communication. — Susu

Do you have any way of proving that?

What about art semi-automatically generated by a neural network that in effect produces novel images with high artistic potential by interpolating the patterns that exist within large databases of artistic, natural and cultural images? Or that transfers the statistical qualities of an artist's style onto an arbitrary image to produce a novel 'painting' in that artist's style? — sime

If it helps towards defining what art is I’d be interested.

If I gave an artist an entirely new motive: “Paint polar bears climbing palm trees.” And he makes such a painting. Which one of us is the artist? Me? No, he is of course. The artistic idea that matters is in the execution of the painting. — Congau

I don’t know if that helps much in terms of originality. If the execution is done in a realist manner, as most portraits are done, then the artist is falling back on traditional techniques. What exactly could be called original in that? Even if you give the subject a mysterious divine look it would still have to be done by traditional techniques. What would be original was a painting that showed the mysterious divine look, that person, because that’s who it’s about, in a way it had never been perceived before.

To tell the truth it doesn’t really matter who’s better than who at the level we’re talking about. Nor does it help in defining art. Or maybe the disagreement does help in some way by placing the focus on unexpected things that contribute a little to what we think art might be.

Van Gough was a flawed personality which resulted in his working in an intense but narrow confined way with a lot of repetition. This resulted in a body of work narrow in scope and variation. — Punshhh

This is a fair observation. And it contributes a little bit here to what art is. You don’t want to have a relationship with an artist, you’ll be second in line to the work. They only care about their work, which means they only care about themselves. All they think about is their work, you might even call it an obsession.

So I think that obsession is an important element. And if you look at any artist of merit that’s bound to be part of their personality.

Lif3r
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↪Brett it's probably a useful idea but the internet is the library of human knowledge. I feel like it is important but perhaps less than I assume. — Lif3r

I see, now. I wasn’t really ignorant of how we got by without the internet. It was in response to the idea that the internet is the library of human knowledge and therefore essential.

I need to see my comment in context. I don’t even recall when I made it.

It occurs to me that the relic is the public experience of art. But it’s a long way from the act itself. Two completely different worlds.

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free.
Elsewhere we are as sitting in a place where sunlight
Filters down, a little at a time,
Waiting for someone to come. Harsh words are spoken,
As the sun yelllows the green of the maple tree....

Too drunk/inept to deliver a message, too inattentive to write a poem, to listen to the muse, even though she is present, but not completely heard. Sometimes there were moments of clarity. The poet angry at himself, the muse, the world. Time wasted. Waiting for inspiration.

So this was all, but obscurely
I felt the stirrings of new breath in the pages
Which all winter long had smelled like an old catalogue.
New Sentences were starting up. But the summer
Was well along, not yet past the mid-point
But full and dark with the promise of that fullness,

So there had not been much produced. Drunk as I was, inattentive as I was. But something new stirring. New lines, words, ideas. After waiting so long, working the poems dead at birth. Now they start coming to the surface, more alive now, growing.

That time when one can no longer wander away
And even the least attentive fall silent
To watch the thing that is prepared to happen.

When the muse appears. When she can no longer be ignored. When the poem begins to take shape.

It seems they were both bound to their respective niches. — praxis

Picasso didn’t have a niche. Which is why I respect him so much. He challenged himself each day. Most artists find a vein and work it. Very few did what Picasso did. It’s possible it may not be a good thing. Had he done everything he could have with that new style or did he just get impatient and move on. Even if he failed to really explore a particular vein he explored the possible ways of doing things. Again, it’s the action, the moment, that is art, not the relic. Finish the painting then walk away from it.

Edit: art is either one of these two things; it’s the action or it’s the relic.

the idea that the truly artistic expression is an expression of something higher; quite literally something supra-physical. — Noble Dust

Sometime ago I started an OP titled “Morality and the arts”. This was the OP;

“ In her book “Wickedness” Mary Midgley wrote that ‘It is one main function of cultures to accumulate insights on this matter (morality; our motivation, ambivalence, wasted efforts, damage) , to express them in clear ways as far as possible, and so to maintain a rich treasury of past thought and experience which will save us the trouble of continually starting again from scratch. In this work ... an enormously important part is played by what we call the arts ... From the earliest myths to the most recent novels, all writing that is not fundamentally cheap and frivolous is meant to throw light on the difficulties of the human situation ... ‘

I’m interested in views people out there might have on this, that our morals and human situation are explored and reaffirmed in the arts. Of course this is assuming that morality exists and is not constructed.

What has just come to mind is that the arts have become so shallow and meaningless that if we continue to look to them for insights we will be misguided by the content”.

I guess the question is how interested is the public in art? And how are they exposed to it? And how are they to judge in ignorance? The public flock to big exhibitions on The Impressionists, the Cubists or Post Impressionists, because they have faith in the history and art institutes. But most of the public would shy away from private galleries; they don’t trust, or can’t understand, what they’re looking at.

On the other hand the most successful of artists have a relationship with members of what might be called the establishment. This is the history of art. They’re the ones who find some value in art. It’s difficult to know if it’s genuine, but they’re the ones who become collectors, which gives the work it’s value. Of course there’s the whole academic circle as well, which operates alongside. To tell the truth I put more faith in the collectors than the academic world.

I think the question is how, if at all, will art survive it's commodification — Noble Dust

Can anything survive commodification? The problem seems to be that despite something being commodified people still regard it as the genuine thing. That may be because they’re ignorant about art, or even quality for that matter. When so many people call themselves an artist what does it mean anymore. There’s a difference between being a painter and being an artist but people will tell you without pause that they’re an artist, and of course the whole self esteem movement insists that we’re all creative, we’re all artists.

:up:

Yes, I can I imagine that. Not very impressive from what I saw.

A distinction needs to be made between commercial art and what you’re talking about as the Brit Art work. Commercial art and marketing was used to promote Brit Art, but that doesn’t mean Brit Art is commercial art itself, no matter how much promotion went on in support of it.

Is that what sets it apart from what we’re calling art?
— Brett

I’m not saying that. I thought I made it clear in my previous post that I think commercial art is still art, — praxis

I know that’s not what you were saying. It’s what I was thinking about. I was suggesting commercial art was about persuasion.

Art seems to be more about discovery than invention. It seems to be about searching, in that moment when the artist is working. If he knows where he’s going, what he’s going to do, then there can be no moment of discovery. Repeating yourself, finding a way of doing things, is more about technique, getting it right.

So I don’t see how commercial art can be art in the sense we’re seeking meaning. Commercial art is too much about technique. No budget or client has the time for the act of discovery. All commercial art has a deadline.

That’s the problem I have with Van Gogh, slavishly painting away day after day, the same thing over and over and over, like a moth at a window. What’s his intention, what does he expect? Seemingly nothing. That’s who he is, that’s his whole history.
What’s the point of all that compared to a Picasso who tears art apart, dissects it like a frog, then puts it back together again. He does that over and over and over. Van Gogh never did it once.

I tried each thing, only some were immortal and free. — csalisbury

Of all the things I’ve tried, followed or thought about, there were only a few true answers, a few revelations about life to help.

Elsewhere we are as sitting in a place where sunlight
Filters down, a little at a time, — csalisbury

Otherwise it’s not much if a life. Is there more than this?

Waiting for someone to come. Harsh words are spoken,
As the sun yelllows the green of the maple tree.... — csalisbury

Waiting for some revelation, some point to it all. Discontent. Life is passing by.

Thanks. It wasn’t coming up on my screen.

I don’t understand the obsession with taxation except as some sort of revenge. The government wastes so much of the tax take through its systems and the public have little say where the money is spent.

Wouldn’t it be more effective to shift the focus and pressure from taxation to better wages. If people had better wages and more disposable income they would spend it on what directly benefits them with no middle man. Their spending stimulates the economy. Taxation just shifts the money from one vault to another.

I understand that. I was wondering what you thought was unethical about how he earned what he did. The problem seems to be about the amount he took from his company, that the amount was unethical.

Probably because Amazon's "innovative" two day delivery service, which with it used in part to capture a nearly 50% market share in e-commerce was build on brutal working conditions. — Maw

Okay, that’s an answer, which is different from what VagabondSpectre gave which was more about how he spent it. I don’t know what the work conditions are like. What are they that’s brutal?

Amazon is actually an amazingly efficient business, but the amount of money Besos can extract from it is unethical — VagabondSpectre

Why do you think it’s unethical?

In my opinion, it's not necessarily money itself that defines commercial art but the intent or purpose with which it's created. — praxis

I think the objective in commercial art is ultimately about money. The art is one of many facets used to sell something, it could be butter, a country, a band or real estate.

But, governments also use commercial art to sell themselves and their ideas, and that’s not necessarily about money but persuasion, which is what commercial art comes down when I think about it. So let’s say commercial art is about persuasion. And commercial art is used to sell art itself, all those carefully designed art galleries, the books, the advertising and promotion.

Is that what sets it apart from what we’re calling art? Art is not trying to persuade us of anything, it’s a take it or leave it offer. Once you start thinking about persuasion you’re thinking about target audiences, budgets, clients and advertising mediums. I think that self consciousness removes it from what we’re trying to define about art.

Sorry, I can’t help it, Electronic Rape.

Yes, so be careful, any rashes, ringing in your ears, metallic taste in your mouth .....

or, Sensation of Blunt Trauma to Head.

So the question should be; where is art as I know it going next?

That’s not meant to be as scathing as it might sound. But true nevertheless, don’t you think?

Because shouldn’t it include dancing, acting and writing?

Edit: one direction is huge profits in investment of established artists. Another is more people calling themselves artists.

But one has to look at anthropological history then and see how the Indigenous/nomadic pre-agricultural societies functioned well enough without either divine rule or any form of class stratification, — Grre

Is that actually true, no tribal elders, no chiefs, no shamans, no female/male dynamics?

All that equals power. And if that means security for the tribe then they retain that power.

Presumably you’ve determined what art is?

Fuller list of symptoms:

Chilling of Skin/ Instant Coldness - Generalized or Localized
Thermal heating, nighttime, severe night sweats
Thermal heating, daytime, discernible "microwave hot spots" on skull
Intense Itching
Benign or Malignant Tumors
Ringing in Ears
Body Manipulation
Induced Imagery/Thoughts
Induced Sleep
Seizures
Sensation of Blunt Trauma to Head
Induced Smells
Coughing up Blood
Sensation of Electric Current Running through the Body
Dehydration
Sudden onset asthma
Irregular Heartbeat
Hyperactive bladder, sudden incontinence
Sensation of Objects being Forced into various areas of the Body
Deterioration of Cognitive Abilities
Jaw or Tooth Pain
Holograms
Severe facial and glandular swelling
Sleep Deprivation
Dizziness or Loss of Balance
Blackouts or loss of consciousness
Severe disorientation while driving
Lesions on Internal Organs
Sudden Rashes
Sudden appearance of large burn marks
Dream Manipulation
Memory Loss
Thought Monitoring/Manipulation
Electronic Rape
Metallic Taste in Mouth
Thyroid Problems
Electroshocks
Nausea
Tingling
Extreme Fatigue
Nosebleeds
Topical & Internal Burning
Genital Manipulation
Numbness
Vision Loss/Impairment
Hair Loss
Transmission of specific commands into the subconscious
Visual disturbances, visual hallucinations
Inject words, numbers into brain via electromagnetic radiation waves
Manipulation of emotions
Reading thoughts remotely
Causing pain to any nerve of the body.
Remote manipulation of human behavior from space
Harassment, stress symptoms such as helicopters flying overhead
Seeing, as in a camera, through your eyes, i.e. to see what you see exactly
Control of sleep patterns.
Computer-brain interface, control and communication
Complex control of the brain such as retrieving memories, implanting personalities
Microwave hearing. The hearing of voices in the head from an outside source, but nobody else can hear the voices except the targeted individual.
https://www.change.org/p/united-states-congress-stop-people-from-using-psychotronic-weapons

a course on entrepreneurship majoring in Ancient History. — Banno

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

Four years at uni. All work handed in then marked down if you used Wiki as a reference.

We have art superstars like Anish kapoor producing soulless works on a gigantic scale to impress. — Punshhh

Meanwhile while all this is going on in the mainstream, thousands of artists like me work in more traditional ways, in the shadows, ignored by the mainstream and widely considered by the establishment as not producing Art, — Punshhh

What exactly are we expecting from art? Anish Kapoor produces his big pieces, or should I say directs the construction of his big pieces, that are really about spectacle and interaction on a larger than life scale. What should we expect from him?

You seem to feel that he has nothing to do with art, that art is what you and others do, and that groups like communication and media giants should stay away. Because of what? Is their influence any different than the Pope over Michelangelo?

What is it exactly that we expect from art?