The mutability which leaves absolutely no impression upon us in ordinary life, because we are immersed so thoroughly within it, which is constituted by the alternation between illusion and substance, memory and hope, art arrests for some brief period of time, restraining these opposing elements in a single image so that we can see clearly just how deep fragility reaches, down into the heart of the world.
you think ALL art holds this theme? i agree that it’s a common theme, an important theme, and even a good theme, but the implication that this is common to all art…I’m not convinced it is. not all art is about showing the beauty of everyday things, and not all art is about fragility.
Interesting Vanitas. This memory you talk of to me I’d guess is the memory of what we are lead to but the lack of memory of what leads to it. This feeling probably makes us wonder how art can reproduce this. However the question is what makes us want to question and wonder why art can reproduce this? Is it something about the nature of art that does this? Art is artificial, architecture is too but it doesn’t appear to be the same here. Why then? I would say it’s because art is more intuitive it’s not based or constructed on “rules” so much.
So we wonder how an artificial thing not based on rules can express what we are leading to but not how. Why? I think it’s probably because what leads to us doing something appears to us to be based on rules probably because we don’t see how it was lead too. So we say if we don’t know how we didn’t cause it to be lead to therefore some “outside” rules existed that lead to it. Rules are not humanly made. The fact that we wonder how art does this shows a desire to be able to lead to what were doing when it apparently seems were not responsible for it because of outside rules. In other words we want to feel were “responsible” for “everything” we do. Why? I would say it’s because it makes us feel “more” responsible for whatever we do. As if were responsible for everything we do there’s no doing we do which were not responsible for which makes us feel we “can” be not responsible for something. Why do we want to be more responsible for the individual things we do because then others cant’ say were not responsible for it. Which shows a desire to be responsible for the things we do and why because then it enables us to perceive ourselves as beings in the world like hedeiger said.
However I think this is different. I think we want to feel like beings in the world as it makes us feel that to die is not what’s supposed to happen. We want to feel to live is what’s supposed to happen because then it makes us feel we were supposed “to be born”. Why do we want to feel we were supposed to be born? As then it makes us feel all the things that did happen to us were “meant” to happen to us. Why would we like this to be the case? I would say it’s because we don’t want to feel that we don’t always get the best. In other words humans want to feel they always get the best.
This is because this desire makes us have the behavior of always trying to do what are rationality tells us to do. In other words to want the best is a product of evolutions aim to make us function as rational beings and act out that rationality. So this fascination with art and its apparent memory comes from our function as rational beings and our desire to have the best.
why does everyone think art needs a purpose? isnt entertainment enough? because, when it comes down to it, thats it’s only purpose
What a shallow deprived life you must lead.
Haha, entertainment is a purpose, sure. But even philosophizing is something of an art. You see no other purpose for it than entertainment? I think the word “art” kind of implies a purpose, even if creating art is the purpose. There is something practical, cultured, and undoubtedly human about “art”. Art really only has what ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’ we ascribe to it, which is why we have designations like kitsch, fine arts, etc. I must say though, it really would be sad if you’ve never found value in some manner of art other than mere entertainment.
Art can be entertaining. But – can art be only entertaining and still be art? Can art be completely free of any entertainment value whatsoever and still be art?
I suppose an argument could be made that some art is not entertaining at all, even disturbing or repulsive to one degree or another. However, doesn’t there have to be some sort of redeeming attraction or entertainment aspect to it… or does there? District 9 was a difficult composite, both entertaining and grossly repulsive. I just couldn’t watch it after awhile and skipped through to the end. The ending was sublime, though also difficult to watch.
I have a very hard time with gross stuff, too much killing or trauma, and so on. For some reason, I need entertainment and aesthetic appeal. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that everyone is like that, though I wonder about the humanity and psychological health of people who are that inured.
Maybe it’s how one sees nature as a whole. I don’t see any plan or scheme there at all. There is a process - I wouldn’t necessarily call it evolution - but when it slows down then a revolution takes place. Nature tries to put together something and start all over again, just for the sake of creating. This is the only true creativity. Nature uses no models or precedents, and so has nothing to do with art per se.
Artists find it comforting to think that they are creative: creative art', creative ideas’, creative politics'. There’s nothing really creative in them in the sense of doing anything original, new or free. The artists pick something here and something there, put them together, and think they have created something marvelous. They are using something that is already there; their work is an imitation. Some are not decorous enough to admit that. They are all imitating something that is already there. Imitation and style are the only creativity’ we have. We each have our own style according to the school we attended, the language we are taught, the books we have read, the examinations we have taken. And within that framework again we each have our own style. Perfecting style and technique is all that operates there.
For me, art must be about ideas and produce some sort of insight. It must make some demands on my higher faculties. Of course one must be adequate to the the thing that the artist is trying to express.
So, what, we have to go to art school first in order to apprciate what the artist is trying to express?
There is something to that. It brings up the idea that the observed and the observer have some sort of cultural or psychic connection. Thus, the more you can see in an art work, the more you can enjoy it or appreciate its depths and layers. And the more that an artist puts into a work cleverly and creatively, the better it captures my interest and appreciation. I think about this often when I compare good British tv shows to American ones.
The more you lower the standards of recognition and preference of something’s qualities, the more you find appreciation in everything.
If you cant read a book how will you give it meaning? For an animal a book is just a colored shape, for a savage it might just be marks on paper, only an educated man can give it meaning.
Someone can listen to a symphony but that dosnt mean they get the symphony. It may just be a series of pleasent sounds, which is ok but there much that you will miss. Marshall McLuhan talks about this in his book The Medium is the Message. Even people who have never seen a motion picture before will miss a great deal because they havent yet learned how to whatch a movie.
true … I suppose ones understanding of something is limited to his knowledge he has about it. But there’s also style associated with expression which deals with more the way in which something is done, as distinct from the understanding of its content.
… a lot of this is culturally acquired you know.
Yup.
As I recall the movie was shown to some tribe in Africa, it was about how to avoid malaria buy avoiding pools or puddles of stagnet water, after the movie they where asked what they saw, everyone said they saw a chicken which the peoople showing it didnt even know there was a chicken in it. After reviewing the movie they did finally see the chicken that briefly ran across the corner on one frame.
Ahem…
You’ve got your practicality - educational value (informing people about malaria).
You’ve got your culture - the culture which produced the film obviously differing from that of the target audience.
And you’ve got your ‘humanity’ - perspective (representation, interpretation, etc.).
There may be culinary art in how you take the action to put a dead chicken into a state where it is fit for the purpose of feeding your body. Maybe those tribe women would benefit from a video about that. That’s assuming the tribesmen don’t do the cooking. 
art is a reflection of ones admiration and inspiration.