What Is Art For?

::NOTES::


Questions: Is art necessary? Where did art come from? What effects- on individuals and society- does art have?

- Philosophers, particularly aestheticians, deal with the metaphysical or ontological status of artworks and aesthetic experience; sociologist and anthropologists address art’s forms and functions- economic, political, spiritual, practical, social- in groups of people; psychologists and psychoanalysts consider what art does for individuals- amuses them, distracts them, aids sublimination, resolves conflict, and so forth.
- Anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and cultural historians who use the word “art” when they mean to discuss particular arts in particular circumstances risk begging the question of worth and value. It should not hamper our thinking.
- Why does art – like language, toolmaking, symbolization – contribute to the human species that would account for its appearance in the human repertoire?
o Art is a language.
- Does art have selective value?
o The arts are everywhere; they are ubiquitous. It is found in every society, in one form or another. It is more prevalent in some societies.
o In most societies, art is integral to many activities of life. These activities may have survival value.
o The arts are a source of pleasure. Nature makes advantageous behavior pleasurable.
- What could the survival value be? What was art for in the context of human evolution?
o It has been for political, social and psychological purposes, and art must be for others things as well.
o Art is a universal human need. Different cultures treat arts differently, but the need for self expression and pictorial documentation exists in every society, no matter what detrimental conditions exist in that area.
- A behavior of art should compromise both making and experiencing art. An individual is a representation of the species.
o What does art do for the individual? How does it help the individual mature? How does it help the species evolve?
o Art contributes something essential to the human being who makes or responds to it. It is beneficial for its biological fitness.
- The history of art as a behavior is not the traditional art history we learn in school.
It consists of many things – such as chipped stone tools, cave paintings.
- Art is a manifestation of culture. Art exists in every human being. The “artists” may just be the ones that are more attracted to or skilled at displaying it. Art has value to human beings.
- Art can be representation.

:: REFLECTION ::


Art can reflect the whole mood and feeling of an era, it can reflect the mood of a society. It documents history and past emotions felt about certain events. Art can speak for one individual’s feeling and experience, or it can speak for a whole nation.

Every culture on earth has some form of art. Art does not only have to be visual. It also does not only consist of ‘the arts’ as well (dance, writing, music). To me, art can be traditions and rituals in cultures. It can be the aura formed by a culture. It is anything that thrives on creativity. The word art is an endless abyss that can be applied to nearly everything we surround ourselves with.

Different cultures treat arts differently, but the need for self-expression and pictorial documentation exists in every society, no matter what detrimental conditions exist in that area. Art exists through war, famine, and genocides. It identifies more with need rather than want.

Each culture manifests art in different ways. Some art is created out of an economic need, some art is created out of a spiritual need, some is created out of a personal need, and some is created because of political and social problems in a society. Either way, art has existed in every human, in some form or another since the beginning of human evolution. Art gets more complex and intricate as we evolve.