Why is Art?

[Assent]

Why do we laugh at humor? Why are some painters good and others bad, and why do we paint at all? Why will people walk into a theater (movie or play) and believe a lie for about two hours? Why has fiction taken off where myth left off? Why does art exist?

For the theists in the audience: why would God create humanity with a desire to make artwork, and consider some things beautiful and other things ugly?

For the atheists in the audience: what purpose does art serve such that it would be selected for in evolution?

I have my thoughts on this matter, but I will leave them unsaid for now; I am too interested in hearing your ideas to engage in debate immediately. If I see enough interest in my question, then I will tell you my answer.

[QED]

This is the subject Of John Barrow's excellent book titled "The Artful Universe". Any analysis of aesthetics in a reductionist manner usually elicits the disgust of the more spiritually minded among us, but as Feynman points out in The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, adding an appreciation of the atomic

[historylass]

Why do we laugh at humor? Why are some painters good and others bad, and why do we paint at all? Why will people walk into a theater (movie or play) and believe a lie for about two hours? Why has fiction taken off where myth left off? Why does art exist?

For the theists in the audience: why would God create humanity with a desire to make artwork, and consider some things beautiful and other things ugly?

For the atheists in the audience: what purpose does art serve such that it would be selected for in evolution?

I have my thoughts on this matter, but I will leave them unsaid for now; I am too interested in hearing your ideas to engage in debate immediately. If I see enough interest in my question, then I will tell you my answer.

There seems to be two questions here. Why do we create art and why is some art ugly and others beautiful? I'm answer the second question first and do it with that well-worn cliche. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. For some, a painting may be ugly. For others, it is beautiful.

But art is not just about beauty - in the sense that something is aesthetically pleasing. As a Christian, I believe that there are two reasons for art. One, I believe it is a gift from God. There is no reason. It is there just to be enjoyed. Two art has come about because humans have the ability to think about, recreate and reinterpret the world. We have been made as creative beings.

For me, the idea of art and how that relates to God is a very personal and very important concept. As a fiction writer, I find that my stories are a way of looking at religious themes (even if they are not specifically stated as such) and many insights come to me when I am writing. While reading or watching movies, I often find myself thinking about God or religious concepts, even when the movie is not related to God at all.

Art is a response to the world. We don't just see the world and accept it. We want to comment on it and recreate it. Art is a way of interpreting the world. For the person appreciating the art, it's about seeing someone else's interpretation and recreation of the world and then coming up with my interpretation. If I see a good movie, I will see the world, for a short time, in the way the screenwriter and the director see it. Then I form my own views.

But art for me is also just about pleasure. When I listen to opera, I lose myself in an almost spiritual way. The same again when I look at beautiful painting. They are there to be enjoyed. I believe that God has given us the ability to find pleasure and enjoyment in different things. Art is just one of them.

I haven't done a very good job of explaining myself here. It's hard because it is so important to me. But I also want to point out that that is how I relate to art. Other people have different ways of relating to art that are just as valid. That's why I think the main reason for art is that it is simply is a gift. No reason. No big plan. It's just a gift. And I think each individual views that gift a little differently and sees different reasons for why we have it.

[QED]

There seems to be two questions here. Why do we create art and why is some art ugly and others beautiful? I'm answer the second question first and do it with that well-worn cliche. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. For some, a painting may be ugly. For others, it is beautiful.

But art is not just about beauty - in the sense that something is aesthetically pleasing. As a Christian, I believe that there are two reasons for art. One, I believe it is a gift from God.

But then everything is a gift from God if we suppose God to be our creator. Perhaps the recognition that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"will be interpreted as the exercising of human free-will in the face of divine absolutes? I don't think such notions help advance our understanding of anything.

Two art has come about because humans have the ability to think about, recreate and reinterpret the world. We have been made as creative beings.

Interpretation is, I think, the key to understanding what Art does for us. Good artists seem to have the knack of interpreting things in new and appealing ways on our behalf, as well as providing the raw materials for us to base our own interpretations upon.

For me, the idea of art and how that relates to God is a very personal and very important concept. As a fiction writer, I find that my stories are a way of looking at religious themes (even if they are not specifically stated as such) and many insights come to me when I am writing. While reading or watching movies, I often find myself thinking about God or religious concepts, even when the movie is not related to God at all.

Perhaps that's because you can play around with different interpretations, and like colors, they become more interesting when contrated with each other.

Art is a response to the world. We don't just see the world and accept it. We want to comment on it and recreate it. Art is a way of interpreting the world. For the person appreciating the art, it's about seeing someone else's interpretation and recreation of the world and then coming up with my interpretation. If I see a good movie, I will see the world, for a short time, in the way the screenwriter and the director see it. Then I form my own views.

Agreed -- but where does the pleasure come from...

But art for me is also just about pleasure. When I listen to opera, I lose myself in an almost spiritual way. The same again when I look at beautiful painting. They are there to be enjoyed. I believe that God has given us the ability to find pleasure and enjoyment in different things. Art is just one of them.

Yes, but what could pleasure possibly be? Think of it another way. What is sweetness? The idea that sweetness could have some tangible existence outside our nervous systems is obviously nonsense when we reduce the stimuli to it's carbon, hydrogen and oxygen components. The answer is that the value of these things has been discovered by those things that need them to remain alive. Attraction and repulsion become entangled with pleasure and pain as gradual developments in nervous systems generate control loops linking sense and motor systems.

In his book "The Artful Universe" John Barrow explains how our favourite landscape paintings are most often those that depict ideal habitats for humans. Arctic or Dessert wasteland scenes are vastly outnumbered by those depicting greener landscapes offering what our distant ancestors would identify as having valuable mixes of cover and open land.

Can such reductionist arguments explain everything to do with such apparently lofty spiritual issues? I've yet to see something that defies explanation in these terms. Even music can be mathematically analysed and reduced to striking the right balance between being too simple or too complex to hold our attentions.

[boxofpaints]

Generally, I tend to be of the mindset that although pondering things is healthy and natural, certain questions give me a visual of a hamster running in a wheel.
Having grown up around art (my mother is a painter, my brother is an opera singer), I feel that I understand the concept of art quite well. From where I see it, asking a deeply intricate questions about its purpose and meaning is kind of loosing sight of the point of art, and rather turning it into something it's not; like an equation. The problem is, I don't believe art can really be equated...it's sort of the difference between the question," Why is a bird a bird" and "Why does a bird fly". The latter has an answer, but the first one isn't exactly a question, so how could one answer it?
This topic actually reminds me of a story my mother once told me. When she was a little girl, she sat awake one night, having been woken up by her older brother's thrashing and screaming. Although both very intelligent individuals, they had very contrasting mindsets. Eventually my grandmother came rushing in to comfort him, at which point, my mother asked her what was wrong with him. Her response was," Oh, he's thinking about forever, again," and continued her hushing. My mother sat back in her bed and began to let the concept of forever unfold in her mind. She felt frightened and suffocated by the vast depth and unknown of it, and began feeling panicky. Then, my mother being my mother said aloud," Oh, well," and went to sleep.

[BeHereNow]

Can it be that the explanation of art is “scienctific” in nature, but science is not fully developed?

I have not read the full references QED provided here and in other posts, but consider such when I pose this question/comment. I have been struggling with dialup for many months now, and it seems broadband is in the foreseeable future. My research abilities are very limited.

I have had several encounters with the medical profession, and find myself repeatedly saying “Diagnostic medicine is an art, more than science.” I realize this is a different art than painting, etc.

I have told my medical professionals things about my body that they denied, because of the science they used (x-rays, blood tests, etc). I proved them (and their science) wrong in some glaring examples. I had a kidney stone the size of a kidney bean, and for two months even the specialists denied it, until FINALLY an x-ray confirmed what I had been telling them. I had several occurrences of kidney stones, and told them so, and told them this was essentially the same, except intermittent. My specialist dismissed my cracker barrel diagnosis by pointing to an x-ray and saying “If you had one, it would show here.”

I believe good artists have an intuitive ability to express things which could potentially be explained by science. They intuit things which could be explained by science, if science were “fully developed”, and yet, I believe that intuited truths will lead the way for science, as science explores each new frontier, in an infinite chain of new frontiers.

As I have said before, intuition supplements science, but never undermines it.

[QED]

Well I hope you manage to get broadband access soon BeHereNow. Dial up must be sheer torture. Intuition is another one of those areas that folklore seems to have fenced-off as having an obvious supernatural component. There's a wonderful little book by the journalist Malcolm Gladwell called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It's not written from the angle I'm coming from, but in it he describes several real-life "mysteries" that I can see many people mistaking for evidence of supernatural intervention into people's affairs. The natural resolution of these "mysteries" turns out to be subterranean processing in the brain that only usually reveals itself when it hands over the results of its processing. This is something that also torments creative types who, now and then, wish that they could understand how they managed to come up with something good. Access to this "black box" processor is denied to the conscious.

[BeHereNow]

QED Well I hope you manage to get broadband access soon BeHereNow. Dial up must be sheer torture. Intuition is another one of those areas that folklore seems to have fenced-off as having an obvious supernatural component. There's a wonderful little book by the journalist Malcolm Gladwell called Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. It's not written from the angle I'm coming from, but in it he describes several real-life "mysteries" that I can see many people mistaking for evidence of supernatural intervention into people's affairs. The natural resolution of these "mysteries" turns out to be subterranean processing in the brain that only usually reveals itself when it hands over the results of its processing. This is something that also torments creative types who, now and then, wish that they could understand how they managed to come up with something good. Access to this "black box" processor is denied to the conscious.

Sheer torture would not be an overstatement. Especially having experienced broadband.

Intuition is one of those loaded words, having many supposed meanings. Gladwell has a strong association with the intuition of folklore. An everyday occurrence, such as women’s intuition. The intuition of Bergson and of Zen is something quite different. It is a rare event, often with months or years of groundwork. It is not something common. Gladwell uses the term “snap judgment”, and this is certainly not intuition. The intuition of Zen is instantaneous realization, which I would say is quite different. Like reasoning, the fruits of true intuition are objective, not a subjective opinion or judgment.

His idea of “rapid cognition” is a component of intuition. Snap judgments and rapid cognitions may overlap, but are far from being congruent.

Intuition does not have a “supernatural component”, not as I mean it.

Transmission of radio waves would have a supernatural component to those who have never experienced such things.
The seasons once had a supernatural component to them.

We might say intuited truths have a mystical component, and mysticism can have a supernatural component under certain usage, but that is not my meaning.
I do not believe there is anything super-natural about proper intuition. We might say ultra natural, beyond the exact measurement or understanding of science as it is today, and still in the realm of philosophy.

Philosophy often breaks the ground for science, sometimes fruitfully, and sometimes barrenly.
Intuition is not unlike many theories of science, which have detractors and supporters, some proving at some point to be true, and some proving to be false.

I do not see a need to have a belief in the supernatural to accept the intuitive realization of truth as presented by Bergson or Zen.
Intuition is a very natural experience, and requires no divine intervention.