What gives art (literature, poetry, religious texts, visual art, music, etc.) its power over the human soul? — Agustino
Clearly, art never helped man to survive, except in a very abstract kind of way. — Agustino
Clearly, art never helped man to survive — Agustino
Art is a way to experience and express culture. — m-theory
As a purpose it serves to reinforce your identity. — m-theory
I said art can be an expression of culture but it can also be an experience of culture (the audience of art experiences culture the artist expresses culture). — m-theory
I don't see a conflict here.
To say that art is an expression and/or an experience of culture, in my view, is no different than saying that art is culture.
I am merely making a distinction between creating art and experiencing art.
I think art is a way to communicate culture, but culture can be communicated in ways that are not necessarily art. — m-theory
If it were the case that our ancestors that had developed cultures also had art, I would agree.
But if art does not show up until the evolution of language then I would say that it art is not strictly culture it is communication about culture. — m-theory
I hate to ask the annoying question, but - how do you define culture? I realize it's a hard word to define; I'm just asking for clarity. — Noble Dust
Where do you get the idea that art doesn't show up until the evolution of language? Again, just asking honestly; are there studies? Maybe I'm just not aware of them. But, if so, how can culture exist at all prior to language? Language, to me, is our interface with reality and experience. Language is another element of humanity that is inseparable from things like culture and art. It's not so cut and dry that we can differentiate periods of time before/after language, and thereby before/after culture or art. This feels tangential to the topic, though. But any thoughts are welcome. — Noble Dust
I do think that art being valuable because "we enjoy it, find it refreshing, invigorating" is a starting point, but I don't think that answers the question of what it's purpose is. Those aspects are just results of our experience. — Noble Dust
Now wait a minute here... Art is something we create — Bitter Crank
What more is there, pray tell, than our own estimation of a purpose in something we do? — Bitter Crank
Is there something more to a bicycle than our estimation of what it is good for, like transportation or exercise and the usefulness that we identify in riding a bike rather than walking or riding a horse? No, there isn't. — Bitter Crank
If you think there is something above and beyond our own estimation of the value in something that we do, then you need to come up with that something PDQ. — Bitter Crank
Art doesn't have an existence outside of human activity. — Bitter Crank
What is PDQ? — Noble Dust
But by creating it, do we even know what it is that we're creating? — Noble Dust
Agreed, excep we seem to have different estimations of the purpose of that thing we do, namely art! And here we have a fundamental problem with art; it's definition... — Noble Dust
Yes, I think we do. Now, whether somebody else LIKES IT is another matter, and quite often people who don't like something are unwilling to call it "art". — Bitter Crank
Art is whatever you think art is. — Bitter Crank
This is an interesting point. Note that man is probably the only animal who is an artist in the real sense of the term. We painted before we really developed language. Men in caves painted. That is a tremendous difference between man and animal.Language is another element of humanity that is inseparable from things like culture and art. It's not so cut and dry that we can differentiate periods of time before/after language, and thereby before/after culture or art. This feels tangential to the topic, though. But any thoughts are welcome. — Noble Dust
But this is most certainly not all from the perspective of the audience. For the perspective of the creator of art, this makes sense - they seek to create something. But from the perspective of the one who experiences art, this doesn't explain much. What effect does art have on the soul? They aren't creating new being. So what enthralls them about art? Why did, for example during the Renessaince, rich patrons of art use a large share of their family fortunes to finance artists? Why did cave men paint, and other cave men regard and care for their paintings?So, the power art has for us is humanistic in a sense because we feel our own spiritual potential when we create and experience art. It's powerful, because it's the divine element moving in us to create new being. And the symbols we end up with instead hint at the divine element in us; they nudge us; the best art always suggests a limitless potential, and we feel as if we're a part of this potential when we experience it; we don't feel like outside observers, we participate in the art itself. The audience is always fifty percent or more of the art. — Noble Dust
Agreed in that I don't think a definition of art has much importance, but Duchamp was ... Fujimura moves in the irrelevant high art circles that have increasingly less and less influence on culture. — Noble Dust
No, it's not this simple. So often, the artist isn't aware of how the audience will interpret the art. Dylan was confounded by how deeply his audience interpreted his lyrics. Now, who's "right" here? Dylan, or the audience? No one is "right". — Noble Dust
Ok, I do agree with you on those points, on a basic level. I do think that art being valuable because "we enjoy it, find it refreshing, invigorating" is a starting point, but I don't think that answers the question of what it's purpose is. — Noble Dust
The question for me, which I don't have an answer to at the moment, is this: why would aesthetic reactions to phenomena arise (evolutionarily)? — Terrapin Station
Maybe it is rooted somehow in perceptual recognition of safe versus dangerous environments, although aesthetic reactions don't map to that very well. So I don't know. — Terrapin Station
The Berdyaev stuff you were talking about in the earlier post is an example of the fallacy of trying to squeeze widespread behavior into a unified interpretive template. — Terrapin Station
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