What gives art (literature, poetry, religious texts, visual art, music, etc.) its power over the human soul? Clearly, art never helped man to survive, except in a very abstract kind of way. It's more likely that we live in order to create art, rather than create art in order to live. [...] — Agustino

I disagree with this view.

Say you’re down emotionally. You put on a record that resonates with you. You now, after listening to the music, are again functional. This, I argue, is survival at work—and in a very down to Earth, non-abstract way. OK, I’m being overly laconic with this, but for this and other similar reasons I’ve never agreed with the dictum that art does not help humankind survive, i.e. that it holds no evolutionary function.

When you are true to the art you like, art will give you sustenance in the form of energy, hope, nerve, and strength, to list just a few conditions of a human’s being which are generally required for survival and health.

To address the possible argument that art severs survival only in a very abstract way, so too do language and maps only serve human survival in very abstract ways. Yet no one claims that language and cognitive models are not evolutionarily functional attributes that directly assist our survival. We don’t live to communicate or read maps nearly as much as we communicate and read maps in order to live. As with language and cognitive models, I argue that so too with art … just as long as you’re true to it; just as long as you’re being authentic about what moves you. Otherwise art becomes the emperor’s new clothes, and here its assistance in survival perishes.

In thinking of art in the broad sense you’ve specified, even rhetoric is a form of art, as is the art of storytelling over a campfire. High art may not be necessary for survival for the vast majority of humans. But the ability to convey truths through art that could not be conveyed through ordinary language, and the ability to relate to such expressions of truth, is—I strongly feel—nearly as important to human survival/health as is the air we breathe.

I grant that what I've stated isn't necessarily convincing, but I wouldn't mind exploring the reasons for the quoted premise.

Hi. While such an approach is hardly exhaustive, I would look at the religious "roots" of art. While some art became quite abstract, much of it seems focused on protagonists. These protagonists seem to embody in a sort of shorthand the values of a culture or subculture. I just watched a documentary on Spock (hence the choice of avatar), and he was summed up by admirers in terms of integrity and dignity. Stoicism obviously comes to mind, and perhaps stoicism is a "late" individualistic sort of "religion." Of course the many paintings of Jesus illustrate this more directly than Star Trek, but I approach the art that speaks to non-specialists (non-theorists?) in terms of incarnate values. With abstract expression and the like, perhaps the artists themselves become the protagonists of interest.

Maybe art does not have a direct evolutionary purpose but is a by product of creativity and inventiveness.
The act of creating and inventing certainly serves a purpose.

On the one hand, I wasn't aware that Picasso was rolling in cash; on the other hand, you may not be aware that Picasso did not paint starry nights. — Bitter Crank

They're two of my favorite visual artists (I prefer Picasso, though, and Van Gogh wouldn't quite make my top 10; he'd be in my top 20 though). The Starry Night I've seen in person quite a few times. It's in the MoMA's collection and I live in New York City.

Van Gogh definitely didn't make any significant money from his work while he was alive, but I wouldn't say he's typical of a (now) famous artist in that. Most famous artists did quite well for themselves while they were alive. And historically, it was a matter of having rich patrons, often royalty.

Maybe art does not have a direct evolutionary purpose but is a by product of creativity and inventiveness. — m-theory

Our predecessors spent a long time in the stone age without apparent innovation, invention, or creative product--at least as far as we can tell from the archeological record. Then around 40,000 - 25,000 years ago they emerged from a long static period--think Lascaux cave paintings, small carved figures, and more complex lithic tools.

I wouldn't myself argue that art has an evolutionary purpose -- we really don't have any way of knowing -- I'd argue for the by-product approach. Creativity wouldn't limit itself to tool making, hide scraping, meat cooking, or weaving; it would overflow into "pointless", expressive activity. Not without some more technology, of course. If a an advanced cave man is going to spread paint around on himself and the walls, he has to make it first--grind some stuff up, and mix it a bit, learn how to deploy it. If he's going to string some shells on a piece of fiber, he has to learn how to drill a little hole in the shell without wrecking it. And so on.

All that is required once we get to this point is enough time and safety to practice expression.

As time went on, all sorts of technology was created. For instance, someone, some modern group of people, figured out how to extract a very strong glue from birch bark, for instance. They used it to fasten points to shafts. Getting glue out of bark is a not-at-all-obvious process. Their method required innovation, experimentation, an understanding of several different materials, and the careful application of heat. From such technology can come more complex creative work.

The Bower bird and the bird of paradise are both good artists and have a highly developed artistic appreciation. However they have no idea what art is, or that they are artists. Termites are brilliant sculptors, with no awareness that they are doing any such thing. Picasso was aware of the absurdity of trying to define(confine) Art, while realising that we as intelligent beings are in a sense artists all the time in everything we do. Perhaps the more one has appreciation of art, the more one is an artist.

It seems to me that one can approach art from different directions, such as the spiritual. One ought at least to recognise the distinction between the intellectual appreciation of art, the art object itself(or artefact) and the act of creating the art(or the artist).

The living(entity) is the artist,
The perceived is the artefact, the art object,
The realisation of the artefact as art by the living entity is artistic appreciation, or Art.

spiritual. — Punshhh

I liked your post except for that one word, spiritual. It has become a very "spongy" word, profoundly vague, indefinite, with no solid definition. I wish the word hadn't been debased by so much use to indicate something, but who knows what?

I spent three hours with an art installation called Another Place, by Anthony Gormley, in Liverpool yesterday afternoon. It was one of the most exhilarating and constructive and remarkable experiences of my life and will have repercussions for years I expect.
These are a couple of the photos produced as a result, I took hundreds.

Yes I know, but if there is some kind of transcendent existence of which we are a part, or an expression, then art may be equally transcendent.

A couple more.

transcendent — Punshhh

Transcendent is a good word.

I spent three hours with an art installation called Another Place, by Anthony Gormley, in Liverpool yesterday afternoon — Punshhh

Hey I was in Liverpool too :) Perhaps we passed and didn't know each other for who we are.

I went to the Liverpool Tate and saw Tracey Emin's bed, which I like, and some prints of William Blake's. This is one, 'The night of Enitharmon's Joy'. I think these, and Gormley's 'installation', communicate something to me that is novel to me, arranging materials in a way that communicate this novel something, and through them the world makes more sense to me.

Blake: The night of Enitharmon's Joy

Just a few general points:-
How are we able to know, to the extent we can know at all, that a phenomenon exists? The irreducible answer must simply be that we experience, or observe it. If we are unable to commonly agree on the nature of an experience undergone then the inference is that the phenomenon being experienced exists merely subjectively and is therefore one somehow peculiar to the idiosyncratic nature of the particular observer. Conversely, should we find ourselves able to commonly agree on the nature of a given experience, the inference then is that this phenomenon being experienced exists objectively.

With regard to this point, the view sometimes advanced that in principle ‘anything’ can constitute ‘Art’ would seem ambiguous. Does it intend to mean that there exists an objective general type of aesthetic experience the nature of which is in principle susceptible to common agreement but that the specific occasioning of the experience concerning a given object may be subjective and inimical to common perception, or does it intend that aesthetic experience itself can exist only subjectively?
The alternative perennially recurring question with regard to creative phenomena - ex: visual art, literature, etc. - “Is such and such Art?”, by in itself invoking the idea that there exists some objective criteria with regard to which the appeal on behalf of an object that it possess aesthetically significant characteristics could be commonly evaluated, directly implies both the idea that the phenomenon, ‘Art’, or aesthetic experience or what you will, exists objectively and also that the occasioning of the experience occurs in an objective manner.

These conflicting views then could in principle be arising from inaccurate observation. In order to advance the theory that Art exists objectively for instance, both with regard to the aesthetic experience itself and with regard to the occasioning of the experience, the logical precursor would seem to be to isolate and describe what constitutes the experience of this phenomenon with a view to obtaining a common agreement on the description. Otherwise, the debate could perhaps be compared for ex with one taking place among various scientists seeking to achieve a commonly agreeable description of planetary motions who yet were possessed of disparate tables of measurement concerning their observed paths!

The alternative that in principle no such commonly agreed description is possible surely then means the phenomenon doesn't objectively exist so that, as an artifice informing nothing of reality, it is, despite its psychological appeal, inconsequential.

(Of course, what it actually consists in is the means by which the nature of certain objectively existing phenomena - as exemplified for example in the, 'Spirit of an Age' - personally experiencable only as psychological concepts and so limited by individual pdychology and environment, can nonetheless be intellectually comprehended and thus commonly communicated.)

Yes, you never know, I was only at Crosby beach though. I like the work of Blake and have used the expression on the face of the ass in that print in a cartoon many moons ago. I don't like Tracy Emin's work unfortunately, I like her as a person and most of the other Brit Art artists, but am critical of the movement and the way they were exploited by Saachi etc..

pretty cool stuff man, thanks for the shares

Yes, I also think so. :)

By the way John, you really need to read Berdyaev's The Meaning of the Creative Act! Very apropos.

Thanks Noble Dust, coincidentally I have just recently started it. As with other books of his it resonates with my thoughts, and I often feel like it is giving voice to my own half-formed intuitions.
:)

Thanks Noble Dust, coincidentally I have just recently started it. As with other books of his it resonates with my thoughts, and I often feel like it is giving voice to my own half-formed intuitions. — John

I was about to order that, so after you get into it properly, let me know how good it is on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is indispensable :P

So why do we create art, and why do we enjoy art.

Because we are living minds, as beings.

Appreciation of art, like that of reason and of service, even humour, is the daily bread of such beings and is foundational in the development of creative agents. So in a real sense art is the joy in the work of creative agency.

I feel as though art enunciates the incapacity of reaching out to the ineffable: The Transcendent.
Art proves metaphysical reality

Sorry, I can't help myself.

As with other books of his it resonates with my thoughts, and I often feel like it is giving voice to my own half-formed intuitions. — John

Right?? That's how I feel reading him as well.

I was about to order that, so after you get into it properly, let me know how good it is on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is indispensable :P — Agustino

I give it a solid 9, for what it's worth.