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In it's very essence art is never practical, how practical is it to pause and take time out of our busy days to appreciate something beautiful? How practical is it to stop what we are doing to sit and think about our lives in a different way? How practical is it to consider the world a dance when it seems like everything but? How practical can it be to ponder colors and their harmony? Funny thing about life, There are a lot of things that are necessary but totally unpractical. Consider sleep, why would someone stop their work, which provides them with a way to live, to lay down and dream of things that have nothing to do with reality? Ah you say, Sleep is absolutely vital to life, without it we all would perish. I think there is the problem, no one looks at art as being that important.
Granted, there were people groups that considered art as the highest goal to aim for and their nations suffered for it, most of the times they fell, so it is viable that it can become over important, but so can sleep, so can food, so can water. Think of every group of people ever recorded, they all had their own type of art, they all had a different way to express the things they went through, the feelings they had, the life they experienced. Be it music, paintings, stories, poems, or songs. It was a vital part to their life, without it life was monotonous and hard. So though it may not always seem practical, we should all take time out of our days to appreciate or create something beautiful. When we do I think we will find that life comes at us a little slower, and we have more time to appreciate the things the Lord has given us.
"Life is a two way road separated by the median of art, It is always there but seldom appreciated, yet without it our entire system would collapse and become no more than a giant multi-car pileup."
5 comments:
Thanks for the thought-provoking post. (You should, by the way, read Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation." I read it at the beginning of this semester and it was amazing.) I have a wusetion though. What do yopu mean by "practical"? Do you mean that it serves some purpose higher than itself? By that definition, if it were not practical it would not be as important as the purposes it served, purposes like survival or making money. If it were impractical by that definition, then it would not be able even to serve those higher purposes. So any way you cut it, asking that question hurts art.
But if you trash the whole idea of "practicality," if you say that there are goals other than making money, if you say that there is more to living than staying alive, then you can place art on par with any other human activity.
There's a great part of Laura Ingalls's books where Pa takes Laura out to look at a muskrat's home, and tells her what makes people people. He says that all creatures make their houses, but only humans choose what kind of houses to make. Only humans can make a hundred different kind of houses, because only we have free will.
Art is an expression of free will, in my opinion. It is what makes us not just eat, but make gourmet food. Not just communicate, but write poetry. It is moving from mere pleasure to real enjoyment. It is moving from the good to the beautiful. It is...
time for class. Sorry for the rant.
Thank you Matthew. That was more thought provoking than my blog even. You're right I should have explained myself more. When I say Practical, I mean It is impossible to consider these things when the practicalities of life overwhelm. When I say practical I don't mean it in it's actual sense, When I hear practical I always think of "Only concerned with purely worldly things", like Money and gain. I have heard people say that a nice wedding isn't practical because it does nothing to help of hinder the marriage. I have heard people say that sculptures aren't practical because they serve no "practical" purpose. I suppose I was reacting to the word I had heard, and it's supposed definition. Oh well, Thus is life, even when learning is hard.
I think you're right. Now that I look at my comment in leisure, I realize that the part about Laura Ingalls and stuff was based on the idea of beauty versus "practicality" in the sense you used the word.
I think that's the challenge of this question: almost any answer you propose causes a contradiction somewhere. But your post definitely threw some light on it.
All of this boils down to the definition of words. BTW, I like your post David. I aways viewed practical as something that was good and usefull. Art is usefull by my standards.
But I like the way you put it, and what You added Matthew. The way both of you look at the word is good.
Now I ponder some things that I considered "unpractical". did i consider them unpractical just because they got in the way of "basic living"?
Here's my response to that question:
* Art is a mental exercise in creativity.
* Creativity is practical in that it enables the accomplishment of tasks that would otherwise be insurmountable.
* Therefore, art is practical.
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