What is the purpose of art?
What do you think the purpose of art is? You can’t eat it. You can’t drink it. You can’t live in it. (Or can you???)
The scene from “A Christmas Story” comes to mind. When the Old Man finally wrestles his prize from the cargo box. “But what is it?” his wife asks twice. It was a lamp, but to the Old Man, wow was it something else! A prize! A symbol of his brain power! A statuesque work of art to be awed from the cold street outside.
Connecting with art
For too long I was in the “But what is it?” camp. I remember being at a certain art exhibit and saying out loud, “I could do that.” And, of course, there is still some art that I just don’t get. It just doesn’t resonate with me. It doesn’t move me.
But going back a few years before the “I could do that” moment, I remember standing in front of a Monet painting in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Tears welled in my eyes with emotion as I, a woman from small-town northwest Ohio who had barely been to any museum before, was standing in front of the magnificent beauty of one of Claude Monet’s paintings. In Paris, France nonetheless!! That was a moment that I connected with an art piece. In that moment, the purpose of the art was to inspire and awe, and it did its job.
Art creator
So now I’m an art creator along with being an art appreciator. In this new role, art’s purpose has expanded. Now part of art’s purpose is to create a space where I’m focused on the immediate moment: the next dab of paint on a canvas, where to position the next collage component, what colors to use with the next stencil…
But it’s more than that. Art’s purpose is also to help me process. Sometimes that processing is physical. There ain’t no feeling like being pissed off and slapping ink and paint around in my sketchbook or on a canvas, playing with colors I normally don’t touch. Through the physicalness of creating, my anger is transformed. Sometimes the new form matches my mood, and I create something with an angry vibe. And sometimes the new form is something beautiful and calm: a true metamorphosis from energetic to physical form.
Processing can also be more idea-based for me. If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you know I participated in a 90-day drawing challenge offered by Sketchbook Skool, an online art school that became very important to me through the beginnings of COVID back in 2020. About a month after the start of the challenge, the retribution against the Palestinian people triggered by the October 7 attack by Hamas was ongoing. (It’s Day 88 of this continued ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide today.) I began using the daily drawing prompts as a challenge to uplift and speak out against these atrocities. Even though the drawing challenge is over, I continue my daily drawings and add elements relating to #ceasefirenow #freePalestine #nowarbyclasswar #onehuman family. There’s not much I can do about what’s happening in Palestine past calling my elected representatives, but I can create art and share it. It’s not much, but it’s something…
Making friends through art
I’m a creator who is working towards growing her community and sustainably selling my art. I also sometimes create politically focused art, and I’m open and transparent with sharing this art. I realize that doing this might cause me to lose followers or even gain opponents.
That’s OK! Because those folks who leave (or decide to troll me) are not my community. Those folks are me, standing in front of that art piece and thinking “I could do that.” Or they might be people who don’t like it when people disagree with them, whether it’s through an art piece or a conversation. Sometimes the purpose of art is to rattle the cages of what and how you think!
Summing up
Art is incredible. Wonderful! It has so many different purposes. For the sake of this blog post, I’ve focused more on my experiences appreciating (or not) and making visual art. But that ignores the creativity involved with cooking and baking, with creating architecture, with writing books, with composing music… All are artistic creations!
And, just like the rest of the world, art is complex. Some is made to be beautiful. Some functional. Some to placate and calm. Some to stir up and agitate. And everything in between.
At the end of the day, I think the purpose of art is to connect with and move our souls. And just because a piece doesn’t do that for you specifically doesn’t make it any less art, because 7.9 billion people live on Earth. There’s a pretty strong chance at least a few of those folks could connect with the art.
What do you think?
So what’s your takeaway after reading this? What do you think the purpose of art is?