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Art and its Purpose
Hello,
I'm wondering what people think about Art, and it's purpose, and what its goals should be.
Like, do you think there is an ideal goal it serves for the person creating it? Do you think there is an ideal goal it serves for the person experiencing it?
This is basically a spin-off message from the Da Vinci Code thread.
For example - take literature. What should the driving force behind the writer be? What goals should the writer have? Why should the reader be reading? How (ie, with what criteria) should a reader choose what to read? What shoult the reader expect to get out of reading?
Similar questions for other art forms - visual arts, music, dramatic arts (tv, movies, plays).
I don't think there is a simple black-and-white answer, and I also think that different people can "get" different things out of different works of art (which is one of the reasons it is art, as opposed to an expository essay). I think art can range from simple aesthetics to detailing what it is to be human, and human's relation to nature and to the divine, and can comment or attempt to reveal divinity.
I'm curious about what others think.
Insofar as what I've read on the subject, I've read some of Gogol's stories which deal with it in the contexts of stories. I thought he worked into his stories the idea that real art must somehow capture something of the divine, and that honed talent focusing on that goal is capable of doing so, but that squandered taled wasted on other goals (money, status) can never reach such heights.
I've also heard that C.S. Lewis and Tolkien (in his private letters) have written on this subject from a religious perspective, but I haven't read what they've said about this (with the exception of one letter by Tolkien in which he details his reservations about putting stories into plays and movies).
I've also heart that Tolstoy wrote on the suject, having previously been a secular art critic, and that he believed that without some connection to religion, art quickly goes through the merely beautiful, and thus in order to remain novel, must then focus on the grotesque (which we now see in most modern art - for example the recent student in the US who, on tape, tortured a cat with medical instruments for his final project) and the nonsensical (such as the Dada movement - which I personally like, but which I think does in fact say something about the human condition).
I'm wondering what people think about Art, and it's purpose, and what its goals should be.
Like, do you think there is an ideal goal it serves for the person creating it? Do you think there is an ideal goal it serves for the person experiencing it?
This is basically a spin-off message from the Da Vinci Code thread.
For example - take literature. What should the driving force behind the writer be? What goals should the writer have? Why should the reader be reading? How (ie, with what criteria) should a reader choose what to read? What shoult the reader expect to get out of reading?
Similar questions for other art forms - visual arts, music, dramatic arts (tv, movies, plays).
I don't think there is a simple black-and-white answer, and I also think that different people can "get" different things out of different works of art (which is one of the reasons it is art, as opposed to an expository essay). I think art can range from simple aesthetics to detailing what it is to be human, and human's relation to nature and to the divine, and can comment or attempt to reveal divinity.
I'm curious about what others think.
Insofar as what I've read on the subject, I've read some of Gogol's stories which deal with it in the contexts of stories. I thought he worked into his stories the idea that real art must somehow capture something of the divine, and that honed talent focusing on that goal is capable of doing so, but that squandered taled wasted on other goals (money, status) can never reach such heights.
I've also heard that C.S. Lewis and Tolkien (in his private letters) have written on this subject from a religious perspective, but I haven't read what they've said about this (with the exception of one letter by Tolkien in which he details his reservations about putting stories into plays and movies).
I've also heart that Tolstoy wrote on the suject, having previously been a secular art critic, and that he believed that without some connection to religion, art quickly goes through the merely beautiful, and thus in order to remain novel, must then focus on the grotesque (which we now see in most modern art - for example the recent student in the US who, on tape, tortured a cat with medical instruments for his final project) and the nonsensical (such as the Dada movement - which I personally like, but which I think does in fact say something about the human condition).
Comments
I really love reading tolstoy, nabokov, hawthorne, poe etc... but i know that none of it will ever nurture me religously or spiritually. I do however think that they give me a new sense of awareness for life. Art is very romantic (by that i don't mean it has to do with love necessarily) and irrational so i don't think it has an ideal purpose or an ideal goal. I think its an expression of some part of the mind of some person and since we're all very different, every piece of art will be very different. Its a message that someone is trying to convey, and it might mean absolutely nothing to other people, but thats not what matters. I just wish i knew what God thought of it.
OOC, why do you think none of it will ever nourish you religiously or spiritually?
Like, is it simply because they are not religious works?
Then what about things that are in between, like, say, the Chronicles of Narnia, which are children's fictional fantasy stories, but which are also pretty clearly religious allegories.
Mightn't it not be that case that other examples of very good art are also inbetween cases, but less explicitly so? I don't know, I'm just trying to think things out with these questions.
"I do however think that they give me a new sense of awareness for life."
Do you think that a new sense of awareness of life is completely separate from religious/spiritual nourishment? Maybe there is some overlap.
I tend to think there is some overlap, but I haven't really thought about it in a systematic, detailed sort of way.
For example, in the '90s, when I was a teenager, I very much liked listening to music by a band called Nine Inch Nails... very depressed, angry, lashing-out sort of music. Very much the sort of music that many people think is the antithesis of anything spiritual. At the time it seemed to put a lot of my feelings into notes, if that makes sense. In later years, after thinking about it, that music seemed like an, honest, genuine and true expression of the despairing human condition when a person is divorced from certain sorts of things - meaning, purpose, belief in absolutes, belief in a basis for morality, belief in a bigger picture, and so on.
In a way, it basically fleshed-out an awareness of an aspect of life, of the human condition, and in doing so, it managed to make a spiritual sort of point - if only because it was an honest expression from a musician who was genuinely lost, and aware of being lost, and was frustrated about it an not finding a way out, and was able to put that into music. At least to me; I'm sure many people would hear it and think 'trash', but different people leading different lives in different circumstances get different things out of music.
"The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness."
-Nabokov, "Common Sense"
Thats definitely everything that is not our religion, so i only ponder it as a certain view of life, not my view of life, not the truth.
I completely understand where your coming from.Sometimes you have to experience or be exposed to certain unpleasant facets of life in order to become more familer with them or understand them more fully.I use to think the christian life was meant to be lived insulated from the rest of "sinful" human experience.Just live in my nice sheltered "christianized" refuge.Stay away from those "sinners".Keep myself from the angst and pain of the real world,etc. But it was when I exposed myself to the "real" world,a world that is lost and dying,a world full of darkness in desperate need of the saving Light,that I found deeper understanding,a more complete knowledge of the human psyke and the meaning of life in Christ.The LORD taught me many lessons in places I never dreamed I could find anything of value.Thats why I think there is great value to be found in literature and the arts because they convey to us profound insights into our human psyke,they expose us to that creativity and imagination that God has placed in all of us.They help us connect with that One who is the Author of all beauty,the great Artist,the great Sculptor,the great Architect and Designer of life.Beauty is not to be despised.Life is not to be despised.In whatever forms they take,whether they are overtly "religious" or not,the creative genuis is a gift of God and should be treated with the reverence that such a gift entails.For it is the very character and essence of God.