Ideally, art...

[Angst]

i) ... should advance the greater human condition. Art has a responsibility for progress.

ii) ... is unique to its cultural scene. Art has no concern for any greater narrative or the concept of progress.


I know your personal views differ, but I've tried to outline two different discourses, so please try to abide to either. Tell me how your personal view differs from the two options in a post.

I've additionally decided not named the two discourses. Most people with superficial understanding of the discourses will probably spoil what discourse each option represents, that is, of course, if I worded them right.


Which do you think is ideal?

Which do you think is the case?

 

[Kyriakos]

Nice topic

As Heraklitos said about Homer: "he deserves to be beaten with a wooden stick". Also Plato in his Republic calls for banishing all artists from the ideal city

In my view art is more open to the entirety of human sensory/mental experience, so more chaotic than other fields (eg math), potentially more important, but realistically somewhat of an ocean where no one can be meant to examine specific ideas in a very communicable manner. Any piece of art means very different things to any of the people experiencing it..

 

[Borachio]

"Most people with superficial understanding" Well, that's me told.

Anyway.

I think Art is something that the artist cannot help but do. I don't know that it has any purpose at all.

 

[warpus]

In my opinion, neither and both.

Ideally art is whatever the artist wants it to be, and later it becomes whatever people looking at it and appreciating it want it to be.

So at times it will do this and at times it will do that.

 

[timtofly]

"Most people with superficial understanding" Well, that's me told.

Anyway.

I think Art is something that the artist cannot help but do. I don't know that it has any purpose at all.

Would anything a human does have any purpose outside of that individual's thought process?

 

[Angst]

"Most people with superficial understanding" Well, that's me told.

Remember that I'm rambling and inconsistent. It seriously depends if I worded it right. Additionally, the two are gross oversimplifications of the two discourses.

Nice topic

Thanks, means a lot.

 

[Kyriakos]

Would anything a human does have any purpose outside of that individual's thought process?

I would not question that if met with a askari carrying a machete...

 

[timtofly]

I would not question that if met with a askari carrying a machete...

A machete is a great work of art, with a purpose that goes beyond it's beauty. It would seem that even doing nothing has a purpose, but such purpose is only in the mind of the one doing the action. Even art has a purpose for some people and is usable in the mind of other humans to appreciate, or fear.

 

[Kyriakos]

A machete is a great work of art, with a purpose that goes beyond it's beauty. It would seem that even doing nothing has a purpose, but such purpose is only in the mind of the one doing the action. Even art has a purpose for some people and is usable in the mind of other humans to appreciate, or fear.

Yes, but that refined ambiguity tends to abruptly end if one tries to effectively cut your arms/legs off.. :\

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

How does art even do #1?

#2 is good though.

 

[Kyriakos]

How does art even do #1?

#2 is good though.

Some notions (at least as ideas or categories) have appeared in art first. To use the more obvious example of material-tied notions, those inventions in Verne's novels.

Also some curious states of mind usually get first presented (publicly at least) in literary form.

 

[aelf]

... should not be valued by the market.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Some notions (at least as ideas or categories) have appeared in art first. To use the more obvious example of material-tied notions, those inventions in Verne's novels.

You'll have to demonstrate they actually did base it on that. AFAIK, a space gun hasn't been made viable.

 

[Farm Boy]

I would not question that if met with a askari carrying a machete...

How about a farmer with a corn knife? More or less questioning?

 

[Kyriakos]

You'll have to demonstrate they actually did base it on that. AFAIK, a space gun hasn't been made viable.

In any case his art was influential, so it did tie in to actual changes in the world, even if no one can really calculate such parameters anyway

How about a farmer with a corn knife? More or less questioning?

Not in Leopoldian/Belgian Congo.

 

[Kennigit]

Too many terms I cant define (how large is a cultural scene? Geographically-tied? Heck temporally-tied?)

But I dont think art advances the human condition, or more accurately it is impossible to say art has a responsibility or obligation to try to. "How did this advance humans" cannot be a view on a piece of art. Some art could be said to expand human knowledge (I don't really see it in art bringing knowledge, but I could hear arguments out for it just as I can hear out/personally support some irrelevant impractical proof of some mathematical phenomena or the study of some larvae stage of some insect as worthy things to have).

So closest to option 2. If art wanted to consistently set a goal for improving mankind, it would be science. Art, to me, at best describes the human condition in a vague sense; it does not do anything else

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

In any case his art was influential, so it did tie in to actual changes in the world, even if no one can really calculate such parameters anyway

Calculations? I don't think you need them. Anyway, because of that, I got reminded of something. Apparently, serious calls for nuclear disarmament in decision-making circles can be said to have been brought upon by such works as Threads and The Day After. So that answers my initial question then.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Art is surely progressive but doesnt carry any responsibility. You can use it as a tool and try to encage it but it best works when it roams free. I dont think arts first plan is progress yet that is what it eventually leads too.

 

[Tee Kay]

Ideally i), but I'm pragmatic enough to settle for ii)

 

[madviking]

art is how we make sense of the world.

i also disagree with the wording of proposition ii; i think art can be both localized and concerned with the greater narrative.