The Goal of Art A good work of art is designed to induce a reaction within the individuals who observe it. You can love or hate the work art. The induced reaction is important. Art is a way to trigger the unconscious mind of the audience.
The creative energy for the art, comes from the unconscious mind of the artist. The good artist builds a bridge between his unconscious mind, and the unconscious minds of his audience. The unconscious minds of the great artists, anticipate the future, and can convey this vision to others though the art; unconscious bridge to the future.
For example, art during the industrial revolution, changed from photographic clarity, to the fuzziness of impressionist art. This change paralleled the shift in culture away from the historical farm life, based on centuries of pastoral repetition, to unprecedented factory life. The industrial revolution had an impact on human nature, making things fuzzy. The art movement anticipated this change.
Abstract art, which came next, anticipated other changes in culture, made by theory like relativity and uncertainty, where cause and affect became distorted; determinate versus indeterminate. The artists unconsciously sensed and/or anticipated the change, and helped make it conscious.
Idol worship has a connection to the unconscious art affect. The golden calf was a good work of art, that had power over some people, due to its unconscious induction affect. The ancients would project the induced feelings, as coming from the work of art; god in the art. The induced affect was inside them all the time. The art made it conscious. A new car has an art affect, in the sense it induces a feeling of importance.
One modern artist from the 1950's. who was prophetic of now was Escher. He has a work of art called Relativity. In this work of art, there are people climbing staircases at all angles. If you look at any particular staircase, the reference appears fine, by itself. However, if you look at the bigger picture, all the references cannot exist at the same time.
The trick behinds this affect is connected to creating an illusion of 3-D, using 2-D; flat paper. A 3-D illusion can exist in 2-D, but it will not exist in actual 3-D. I can draw a ball on a flat piece of paper to look 3-D. But it you touch it with your finger you can feel it is flat. It can fool the eye but not touch.
Logic is based on cause and affect, which is 2-D (x,y). Logic can create spatial illusions which look 3-D to the eye, but which do not exist in 3-D. One such affect is connected to special relativity. Einstein defined three parameters in special relativity; relativistic distance, time and mass. However, most of physics only uses space-time and ignores relativistic mass. This downgrade from 3-D to 2-D, allows 3-D illusions in 2-D. If you include mass; energy balance, the illusions are easier to see.