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What is art for?
A song, a line of a poem, a painting you can't stop thinking about. None of them is useful, and none of them will leave you alone.
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A little context
When a school has to cut something, the art room is often among the first to go, and the people defending it reach for reasons that sound borrowed: drawing helps with geometry, the choir builds teamwork. In private they say something harder to put in a budget: that the thing matters for its own sake. The trouble is saying what that means.
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ReadingQuite uselessWe can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.
ReadingThe infectionArt is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.
Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.
ReadingTo see, and tell it plainThe greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see.
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see.
ReadingAll ye need to knowBeauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Nearby questions
- Does knowing change it?A piece of writing moves you to tears. Then you learn a machine wrote every word. Does that change it?
- What would you still love if no one could ever see you loving it?Private pleasure, public approval, and the preferences that survive without an audience.
- Can something ugly be great art?Goya's black paintings, a scream in a symphony, a novel built to bore you. Some of the most admired work is hard to enjoy.
- The aura on your screenYou know the Sistine Chapel from images. If you went, what exactly would you be going for?
- The blade and the canvasIf you were angry enough at what it stood for, could you ever be right to put a blade through a painting?
