On The Purpose of Art:
"What is the purpose of art?" - a question thrown out to a pack of attitude wielding, autophilosophizing students of literature. Is it to improve society as the Greeks thought? Was a Poet's duty not to change the way in which people lived their lives? In Arisophanes's "The Frogs", a certain poet must be brought back to save Athens from certain impending doom. Not something one could anticipate hearing in today's society.
After a few rounds of comments, a few by myself even - though many a rebuttal less than I would have liked to have returned - we got to a few more interesting statements.
(Warning: These generally unrepresentative of the author's views on art.)
"The artist is an ice ax to break the ice around the frozen hearts of people; art makes us feel."
"Talking about aesthetics is impossible. The philosophy of art? Never."
And my personal favorite:
Student: "Art is vanity."* Prof: "What are you, a monk? What, do you have an ex-girlfriend who's an artist?"
On More General Art Topics:
"They're just like you... only making money." [designers vs students]
"It looks like you're looking at a stone wedding cake." [victorian architecture in Britain]
"Morris doesn't ever really know what he's doing." [on william morris]
"Too much is not enough."
"Women weren't taken very seriously, just look at what they were wearing." [victorian women's roles]
"If things suck visually, what can we do about it?" [what you must ask yourself]
"The rich have no taste anyway, have you noticed that? Okay, maybe I made that up."
*( I could dialogue on this one for hours.)
2 comments:
Student: "Art is vanity."* Prof: "What are you, a monk? What, do you have an ex-girlfriend who's an artist?"
hahaha that is truly awesome.
Ally...no capernwray moment is quite complete without you. *sigh*
In my ethics and morals class last week. We debate earth and earths twin. Which one was better off the abused and dying earth with humans or the one with out. We ( me and my seat mate judith)came up with two agurements that held up for earth. Arts was one of them. The fact that we as humans are the only thing that can make art. Saying that art has an intrisical value that is worth more then a perfect enviroment. The other was, what good would have a perfect world be if we were there to enjoy it.
Art is the value of human life apparently.
I thank goodness God has other uses for me, because I sure can't paint.
Post a Comment