What is the purpose, if any, of art?

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meltzerboy said:
By art, I am including all the arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, drawing, music, dance, literature, poetry, photography, theater, film, and so on. There are several theories: art as a window to the soul, as a means of achieving truth, as a manner of expression and communication of, or identification with, thoughts and emotions, as a distillation of life, as a comment on or predictor of lifestyle trends, as a representation of beauty, purity, or spirituality, as an educational tool, as a means of distraction from life, or for sheer entertainment. Maybe the arts have multiple purposes, or maybe they have no purpose at all.

What do you think?
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The same purpose as everything else in creation: to reflect the beauty of God.

Edwin
 
Ryuji_Yamazaki said:
Phenomenological investigation reveals the more artistic the dumber is man.
It causes one to be in a state that has little to do with reality: that one is therefore a liar. Lies make dumb. To lie is to sin against the Spirit for the Spirit is truth. Art causes the second death which consists in falling asleep in the nightmare of this age only to dream that nightmare again. Artistic indeed.

In short, art is effeminate.
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What was it like to live 30,000 years ago? :hmmm:
This is what it was like to live 30,000 years ago.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
 
**Ryuji

Lies make dumb. To lie is to sin against the Spirit for the Spirit is truth.**

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” John Keats, poet 😉
 
Paddy_Walker said:
When Peter the Great, the Tsar of Russia, visited England Newton and Peter the Great took turns pushing each other through a hedge in a wheelbarrow.
But back to art.
You could say that art is what drives humanity. As the song said, no-one wants to live in a world without love, but whether they admit it or not neither do they want to live in a world without art.
If someone objects to the idea you could ask them why they work. They might say to earn money. And you say, what do you want money for. They say for a nice car, a nice house, a nice wife, etc.
But they like a car because it looks good. And a car looks good because it was designed by an artist and sculpted by sculptor to look good.
The house they would like to buy if they had the money was designed by another artist, an architect with means, who could afford to put form over cost.
Even the wife he likes does not look like a bag-lady. She has the latest in designer [artist] clothes, makeup, jewelry, etc.
For vacation they want to go somewhere that looks like a “picture postcard”.
For their house, garden, and person these people want the best art that money can buy.
Art, as one form or manifestation of beauty and creativity, is a large part of what drives humanity. The soulish or the spiritual forms of beauty and creativity and the source of that is another large part of that which drives humanity.
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I agree. Art seems to pervade everything beautiful we appreciate with regard to design, even the design of the universe. And design is also linked to poetry and music. Further, art appeals to both the physical senses and the spirit.
 
**meltzerboy

I agree. Art seems to pervade everything beautiful we appreciate with regard to design, even the design of the universe. And design is also linked to poetry and music. Further, art appeals to both the physical senses and the spirit.**

I’ve never been able to understand why some people do not see that great religious art is the best of all great art. I have an atheist friend who will not listen to religious music, good as it may be, because it speaks to his heart; and his heart, ruled by his head, says no…
 
Charlemagne_II said:
I’ve never been able to understand why some people do not see that great religious art is the best of all great art.
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There’s a bit of subjectiveness to the appreciation of some instances of art. Understanding how some one else feels about something is going to call on getting inside of their head. And we tend to have limited information on the context of some one else’s mind.
 
Art is a distraction. It involves a lust of the eyes or ears. Better to shun all things worldly and seek only the pleasures of the good spirit.

“Oh, if only a man had a spark of true love in his heart, he would know for certain that all earthly things are full of vanity.”
-The Imitation of Christ, Book 1, Chapter 15
 
One of my favorite quotes by C.S. Lewis-
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Art is a creative expression of who were are. Our gifts & talents are our gifts from God, what we do with them are our gifts back to him.
 
**Thinking

There’s a bit of subjectiveness to the appreciation of some instances of art. Understanding how some one else feels about something is going to call on getting inside of their head. And we tend to have limited information on the context of some one else’s mind. **

Yes, the operative word is “mind.” But where beauty is concerned, the main attraction is to the heart, not the mind.

Those who do not like sacred art have closed their hearts and their minds to it.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
**meltzerboy

I agree. Art seems to pervade everything beautiful we appreciate with regard to design, even the design of the universe. And design is also linked to poetry and music. Further, art appeals to both the physical senses and the spirit.**

I’ve never been able to understand why some people do not see that great religious art is the best of all great art. I have an atheist friend who will not listen to religious music, good as it may be, because it speaks to his heart; and his heart, ruled by his head, says no…
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Agreed. Although I am not Christian, I find the religious music of Bach, Handel, and Mozart most beautiful.
 
There’s so much to say…I’ve especially appreciated what Pope John Paul II wrote about art in his Letter to Artists. Also, the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain has many important things to say in his Art and Scholasticism and The Frontiers of Poetry.

The question you posed has been pondered throughout the ages from many different perspectives. From a Catholic perspective, I would say that the true end of art is to help us to “know, love and serve God in this life”, and lead us to “be happy with Him in the next”. It exists to glorify God. It can be evangelistic just by portraying truth and beauty (even tragic beauty).
 
Ryuji_Yamazaki said:
The purpose of art is to make one dumb. Plato was against art [edited by moderator] or democracy. Newton didn’t play sports or a musical instrument, gamble at whist or gambol on a horse. He dismissed poetry as “a kind of ingenious nonsense”, and the one time he attended an opera he fled at the third act.
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I believe it was Aristotle who said “He who has no knowledge of music, knows other things to no purpose.”
 
meltzerboy said:
Agreed. Although I am not Christian, I find the religious music of Bach, Handel, and Mozart most beautiful.
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An atheist professor at New York University stated that the closest he ever came to religion was when he listened to their music…
 
Ryuji_Yamazaki said:
His inventions are failures. His art is blasphemous.
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Blasphemous in what sense? You haven’t listed your religion, so we don’t really know what you are referring to.

By the way, how did you get away with not listing it?
 
Oneofthewomen said:
One of my favorite quotes by C.S. Lewis-
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Art is a creative expression of who were are. Our gifts & talents are our gifts from God, what we do with them are our gifts back to him.
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👍 In fact friendship is often more likely to endanger our survival.
 
Ryuji_Yamazaki said:
Phenomenological investigation reveals the more artistic the dumber is man.
It causes one to be in a state that has little to do with reality: that one is therefore a liar. Lies make dumb. To lie is to sin against the Spirit for the Spirit is truth. Art causes the second death which consists in falling asleep in the nightmare of this age only to dream that nightmare again. Artistic indeed.

In short, art is effeminate.
Click to expand...
To use “effeminate” as a term of abuse is an insult to womanhood.
 
Charlemagne_II said:
Yes, the operative word is “mind.” But where beauty is concerned, the main attraction is to the heart, not the mind.
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Sorry, I can’t quite follow. I may be wrong, but it seems that you are treating mind and the metaphorical “heart” as mutually exclusive concepts. That’s new to me; in the concept with which I have familiarity heart is a metaphor for emotions which could also in part be said to be states of mind.
 
So… I assume everyone here spends their entire day praying and reading the bible 24/7?
 
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