What good is ART?

What good is ART? Thanks to Friedrich Caspar I've felt how it is to be surrounded by a sea of fog standing atop the mountains of Bohemia. I know how peasants spent their late afternoons reeked in sweat, caked in mud as they celebrate with vodka in nineteenth century Russia. I feel like I've been in Vienna, sharing conversations with Nietzsche, Breuer and Freud, after reading Irvin Yalom's novel for just one week. I've felt how it is to grow as a lower class adolescent with a rich friend in the early 90's of Mexico, just by watching a film by Alfonso Cuaron for two hours! I've fallen in love listening to Sigur Ros and thinking about the right person, and know it is the right person because I know myself, without even leaving the room. And you ask me what good is ART?! Go ahead and tire your lungs with your idle talks and lock your jaws with your pathetic laughs. Life is just too short to let it slip away.

Art creates the meaning we have in life, without it, we are just animals.

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Just something I've dugged up in my notes about a year and a half back. Not sure how this came to be, but a person inside my head must've questioned art's place in life, and another person (whom I favor) had to speak up. I want to ask you all your perspective, how does art give meaning in your life, and others? Do you value this, or regret this "will" we have as "artists"?

Art is the emotional comprehension of the world!!

Art is silent poetry.

Hmm... art

Art is a good good that many use as a via to reach people.

Art is the genotype of everything that moves you in a way or another.

You say: "Art creates the meaning we have in life, without it, we are just animals."

but philosophy, logic, mathematics, psychology... also create meaning but they are not art.
the meaning you're talking about is an emotional decrement. It feels like meaning because it is its counter part. Art and science are like yin and yang they are inseparable in the consciousness of man.

and animal is half of it; the other half is machine: without art we are either animal or machine.

Nice thread...when a person (artist ) can narrate a story or paint a picture good enough for me to want to be there...that is art. I'm going to use Mary Poppins as an example here...when Mary,Jane and Michael jumped into Berts street paintings...I jumped in with them and...I had a lovely time. ' Uncle Alfred on the ceiling well...I still visit him..

Another/different example...The Mona Lisa...OMG...how disappointed I was in this painting...it's so very small...I just had to visit it...wasn't really impressed with it prior but...even less so now.

I'll need to once again find the bangers and mash link I sent to Mel a while ago....this is real art in a funky kind of way....

I think as a poet one should at least have a vague idea what art is!!

Scientific( logic, reason, calculation, measurement...) and artistic(expression, feeling inspiration, imagination..)compensation are inseparable and are as important, even though after industrial revolution scientific minds were obsessed with themselves and tried to undermine the role of art as equal partner in this. But human being without artistic cognizance is as incomplete as human being without scientific cognizance.
Science and art they both born simultaneously together during the human endeavor to survive and to comprehend the surrounding world and also himself, during that survival.

"but philosophy, logic, mathematics, psychology... also create meaning but they are not art."

To some of us they are not art but there are many people out there who would consider these art as well, their art, their inspiration. Art is like your relationship with the world, how you relate to it, relay to it, open yourself up to it.

I do not understand, don't you for example, distinguish between math and music?? why??

I know music contains some elements of math and math contains some elements of music, ((they all do)) but if we do not divide them we can't recognize them, and there would be only chaos and chaos is not good all the time, even when they are beautiful.

Performing arts, visual arts, I am sure we can all differentiate between different forms of art. Math and science are an art to some was my point.

I second that...

Best art is to love others

Art is the physical soul. Art is all the things reality seems to pass up and all the things it shows in the wrong light. Art is anything anyone wants and it has the power to create worlds. But mostly art is the true form of life

Adreamer. I agree that art is more intense form of life.

it is quite refreshing that here everyone has her own version of what art means, and replaces it with the real study of art. We use and exhaust our imagination in description and study of art therefore there are no imaginations left for us in creation of it!!
In the day to day life we refer to every clever thing as art. We say this and that are the work of art, but they are not truly arts, it is only the figure of speech.
I know you guys puling my leg and you do not really think mathematics is a form of art.
"It's elementary, my dear Watson ..."

"A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker
of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than
theirs, it is because they are made with ideas. "

G.H. Hardy

That is true but whatever has pattern and is equally proportioned is not considered art. I take you to the logic of: "a walnut is rounded but whatever is rounded is not walnut." The neighbor's garbage bin, filthy cockroaches, the bullet that keeled Abraham Lincoln they're all symmetrically formed and patterned, but in no way they are considered art.
So at first tell me what is the definition of art, but according to the the book, not fantasy ??

NOTE

by the way my reason for exaggeration is not mocking, I believe it is only through extreme examples we can identify the difference. And I have all the respect for your opinions. I know poets always replace their own discretion with the scientific ones.

My pea brain observations;

To be in touch with our inner being. Inside us all are visions of what is real. We say the word T r e e but we vision a picture of a tree not the word. We communicate with words but project pictures. Galleries of visions hang in our memories halls. An artist "artist" contemplates these into reality for display so others may see what he/she sees. Words are in a sense specific universal while pictures can be what we want them to be. Art provides versatility to stimulate interpretations. imagination, emotion as limited or as far reaching. There are no restrictions with art. Art has no confines, art is free to roam.

^^^

Donald...you've been spying in my dairy! Very well said sweet pea!

Art may be in the observer or the creator. It does not need to be in both to be true art.

Art is more than the combined elements of creativity and expression, yet less than the precise calculations of an engineer. One may find appreciation of the symmetry of a bullet or the repetitive patterns of clockwork devices: it is the subjective appreciation of these things that makes the artist.

However, the person who creates these objects may be an artist as well. As seen with Louis Sullivan, if the pure "form follows function" mentality is adhered to, then the architect is less the artist. Yet, if the design calls for an aesthete not needed purely for the required function, then art has been introduced to science.

It is no coincidence that the person who best exemplified the phrase "form follows function" learned it from its author, and in his own work was the greatest American architectural artist of all time: Frank Lloyd Wright. It is also worth mentioning that Wright's formal education was only in civil engineering. If you can view Fallingwater or the Guggenheim Museum with no sense of brilliant artistry, then it is the observer, not the creator, who lacks art.

As always a very interesting post pushes us to think more and learn more:
" if the design calls for an aesthete not needed purely for the required function, then art has been introduced to science."
I thought architecture is where science and art (design) meet: Where the requested function includes the aesthetic one also.
I always were enthralled, by the architectural concepts such as Tensegrity and so on and now the approach of "form follows function" fascinates me.

To beautiful Everlasting and everlasting Beautiful Chaos
We have to have description in order to be able to identify the subject mater. The reason that the subject of art is so mixed up with the other branches of decrement is the lack of the description in this thread?
But because we are poets we cannot get away without a scientific advent in describing art only by an emotional approach.
Beauty and aesthetic values are in the eyes of beholder. (this is very argumentative: a big group of academician believe beauty lives independent from the eyes and the mind of the viewer))
One of the most important aspect of art is that it is human. So only by human interference art could be created. The subject of art is creation, not what has been already create (by God or nature or...) So not anything with aesthetic value can be called art even it is so magnificently beautiful:
No mater how things are mathematically proportioned or you can measure their symmetrical correspondence to the fragments, still they are not considered art, because they are not created by human, because someone else has created them.
For example flowers or butterflies can't be art regardless of how arresting they may be. Only after they're reproduced and created through the artist mind they turn to art.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Sonnet 18 Shakespeare
~~only in the magic touch of his poetry his friend's blossom remains forever.~~

In opposite scale, not everything that human creates is art. Art as is mentioned, is connected with heart; it is an expressive decrement, or as Bruce Lee said "an emotional content", that also must be aesthetically acclaimed. This part of my statement is in conflict with some portion of fine (modern) art that give the different definition to art. But this is a very long discussion.

What good is ART?
ART, frees our Spirits, to proclaim
"I Am", and I am different than all others,
see my writing, see my painting, see my name in the snow, weeeeeeeee,weeeeeeeee!

1 X 8+ 1 = 9
12 X 8+ 2 = 98
123 X 8 + 3 = 987
1234 X 8 + 4 = 9876
12345 X 8 + 5 = 98765
123456 X 8 + 6 = 987654
1234567 X 8 + 7 = 9876543
12345678 X 8 + 8 = 98765432
123456789 X 8 + 9 = 987654321

I have lost my calculator so I will take your word for it on the last 7!!

looks good though, very clever.

Math :]

I think this line is missing a 5...

12345678 X 8 + 8 = 9876432

so the pattern is broken...

I saw that thanks
it is good to be thorough

typo would not break pattern
patterns do not break, our perspective of them breaks

If you center it is nicer
It is so naif to think that I discover this

Typo would not break pattern
patterns do not break, our perspective of them breaks

^^

It wasn't my perspective who broke the pattern, it was the typo who gave me a new perspective. But despite so, my initial perspective remained intact.

So l guess you are right.

by the way...isn't that a piece of art?

That is the problem: we are constantly trying to sustain and prove our personal perspectives, instead of correcting and adjusting them. We have to change because the object of our observation is changing all the time and also the subject of our observation, us!!. Sometimes we found some stations, some static things that would never change, some formulas, but these formulas are all limited to the precinct of their criteria. like the law of conventional geometry do not apply in the three dimensional geometry, or Newton physic, in the territory of electromagnetic fields.

Of course it is not art, for the reason I already explained few posts above. Art is a personal perspective, THE HUMAN TOUCH. THEY( numbers) look artistic because there is a confusion in our mind in between aesthetic and art. Any subject of art must be(according to me) ecstatically acclaimed. but any thing aesthetically acclaimed is not necessarily a piece of art:: "every walnut is rounded but every rounded thing is not a walnut"
I know some people could never wrap their mind around this. It is like truck driving, some people simply cannot "double clutch"

I cannot double clutch... Nor drive :-s

But the way I see it, is that my initial perspective isnt change, I get a new one and I see the new one but my first one remains. and it's because of the new one that I mentioned the typo.

The same goes with mathematics, that is to me art, because someone invented it. Though my new perspective base on your opinion, is that math, english, philosophy are the tools like the paint and brush used by the artist to get the art, but because they are tools they are not art. However my inital perspective jumps in, yes a battle in my mind is taking place, someone must have come up with math,someone invented it and thus it was their art and we are using their art to come up with art. So math remains as art to me.

However, in that pattern I not only see numbers...
I se a bench... People sitting in there. I have a weird imagination. Though, if it was center I might see the pyramid.

It was not about driving , driving was an example and you take it literally; double clutch conceptually; you drive with notion don't you??
The confusion is you think the math is invented. the concepts of science are not objects of creation, they are the objects of discovery. We CANNOT invent them, we find them, DISCOVER them. But in art is opposite we invent , we CREATE.
Art= creation, science =discovery, could you double clutch this??

I took it literally but I also understood your motion :P
I did double clutch that but here is where i put the breaks...

You see, I have always thought that they invented the English language...( any sort of language) And also the numbers.. I thought they discovered fire but also they created it... with the matches.

So my point is that Art is indeed creation... And science is discovery like you said, but even put together.. discovery and creation makes art... Someone discovered those numbers sometime ago, you created that pattern... Art.

Only beginner break while clutching

Now the confusion is that there are always some arias that these two terrains interfere with each others margins and mingle together... Our minds are looking for exacts but we only could understand things generally not exactly. You have to see where the definite and relative interfere and where they are bordered, without being so utterly confused. Work on your double clutch.

Language is the territory of science and art, (lingual art like poetry and....) language is an art which is created very little individually but mostly collectively.

Matches do not invent or even create fire. Matches only CAUSE the fire because scientifically we manipulate the objects to cause the effect we want. The creativity in science is different nature to the one of art. But ones mind can not get around this either if it is not able to double clutch

By the way I hope you do not find my language too forceful. For in forums people tend to get offended easily and misinterpretations are so easy to accomplish.
I have all the respect for your talent and your enthusiasm.
It so obvious that you are searching for something just a little more than superficial things, in poetry for you are the only person who shows interest.

I never been good with standard cars... and this double clutching might take me a while to finally grasp...they say used your left feet for the clutch but for some reason I want to use my right.
Hence, the reason why I don't drive. Though automatics give me a hard time, it's just that on the road I feel so fat and I'm talking about math...

but yeah, I think some of its parts are art... and I didn't mean to use a subtle rhyme.

Edit: lol no not at all, I don't take it as offensive. Though yeah, I am looking for something else other than the superficial stuff. But seems like it's going to take me a while to even grasp it.

You can not use one foot in standard; you need both and unless you sit facing the rear window (Or some how crisscross your legs,) it is impossible to use the right foot.

Double clutch is after you master the clutch, useful only in truck driving. You have to double clutch once to get out of one gear and than two to shift to the other gear but smoothly in one motion. Your right hand and left foot have to coordinate.

I am glad you are that way.

I was talking to my sister ( who teaches fine art in university) in England and she told me that some of the academics have the same "misconception" about art such as what we are having here. So you are not too far off