Art Function Quotes

The function of art is to acquaint the beholder with something he has not known before.

In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. ...Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of effective communication between people.

My concern is never art, but always what art can be used for.

Religions have always been clearly on to this psycho-therapeutic score. For hundreds of years in the West, Christian art had a very clear function: it was meant to direct us towards the good and wean us off vice.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the public's relationship to art has been weakened by a profound institutional reluctance to address the question of what art is for. This is a question that has, quite unfairly, come to feel impatient, illegitimate, and a little impudent.

The word “art” is something the West has never understood. Art is supposed to be a part of a community. Like, scholars are supposed to be a part of a community... Art is to decorate people’s houses, their skin, their clothes, to make them expand their minds, and it’s supposed to be right in the community, where they can have it when they want it... It’s supposed to be as essential as a grocery store... that’s the only way art can function naturally.

The idea that one might use art for 'instrumental' reasons tends to set off alarm bells at the heart of the cultural elite, who contend that it's not a pill, that it shouldn't be asked to perform some specific function, especially something as egocentric as to 'cheer you up' or to 'make you a more empathetic person.'

The function of art is to bring people into greater touch with reality, and yet our movie houses and family rooms are jammed with people after as much reality-removal as they can get.

Art is not a plaything, but a necessity, and its essence, form, is not a decorative adjustment, but a cup into which life can be poured and lifted to the lips and be tasted.

If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.

I'm in favor of an art that does something other than just sit on its ass in a museum.

The essential argument in the book, 'Art as Therapy,' is that art enjoys such financial and cultural prestige that it's easy to forget the confusion that persists about what it's really for.

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be?

I wonder whether art has a higher function than to make me feel, appreciate, and enjoy natural objects for their art value?

what society requires from art ... is that it function as an early warning system.