Often, I have come across statements, written or verbal, discoursing on the purpose and usefulness of art. To me, from point of view of consumer of the art, art has one and only one objective - experience of beauty, and of the joy which naturally comes out of it.
In assessment of an object of art, it is only this criteria - of creating something beautiful - which we should consider. Nothing else. That art which we often say as serving towards some kind of "education" or "message", etc. should be considered as no art at all, unless it stays uncompromisingly true to its primary purpose - beauty. At best, such items can be called a sophisticated tool of the same purpose.
Using as its foundation 'truths', truths which otherwise might even be constructed as undesirable or gross when seen through the filters of thousands of years of human civilization, art transcends them into something beautiful. It shows us beauty where we never might have perceived it. This sense of beauty and truth is perceived not through our knowledge, but through a sense very primitive, a sense we might not understand, a sense awakened by the object of the art. This awakened sense, encompassing among its ingredients both the basic human instincts and our own comprehension of the world around us, born from our life experiences, is independent and particular to individuals, allowing each of us to perceive the beauty and the truth in sublimely different ways suitable to our own psychs.
Even that art which is just a fanciful picture draws from something true - even though the truth may only be the feelings which we might have experienced.
The feelings and realisations we take away from the experience of an object of art are capable of transcending the layers of thousands of years of social engineering. That which we learn through the astonished experience of beauty, even though we might not rationally be able to articulate it, it stays within, deep rooted, forever.
Maybe it is only art which is capable of fighting the social engineering depicted in 'Brave New World'?
In assessment of an object of art, it is only this criteria - of creating something beautiful - which we should consider. Nothing else. That art which we often say as serving towards some kind of "education" or "message", etc. should be considered as no art at all, unless it stays uncompromisingly true to its primary purpose - beauty. At best, such items can be called a sophisticated tool of the same purpose.
Using as its foundation 'truths', truths which otherwise might even be constructed as undesirable or gross when seen through the filters of thousands of years of human civilization, art transcends them into something beautiful. It shows us beauty where we never might have perceived it. This sense of beauty and truth is perceived not through our knowledge, but through a sense very primitive, a sense we might not understand, a sense awakened by the object of the art. This awakened sense, encompassing among its ingredients both the basic human instincts and our own comprehension of the world around us, born from our life experiences, is independent and particular to individuals, allowing each of us to perceive the beauty and the truth in sublimely different ways suitable to our own psychs.
Even that art which is just a fanciful picture draws from something true - even though the truth may only be the feelings which we might have experienced.
The feelings and realisations we take away from the experience of an object of art are capable of transcending the layers of thousands of years of social engineering. That which we learn through the astonished experience of beauty, even though we might not rationally be able to articulate it, it stays within, deep rooted, forever.
Maybe it is only art which is capable of fighting the social engineering depicted in 'Brave New World'?
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