[mbrock]

I think of art like Kafka thought about literature:

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”

It doesn't seem likely that art is useful in my profession, but is that what it's for?

[veddox]

An impressive quote, but I cannot agree with it fully. Of course it is a very important function of art to shake us up and get us to see the world in a different light. No doubt about that.

But to reduce it to merely this is to ignore what makes art what it is. It ignores the aesthetics, the concept of beauty. The idea that something can have value without having explicit content.

Aesthetics make art a potent tool for transmitting ideas. We are more likely to be influenced by something we sensually enjoy. But it is the aesthetics that make something art, and not the idea. Art can exist without the latter, but not without the former. And that is valid too. Because sometimes, what we really need in this world is just a little bit of beauty.

[mbrock]

Aesthetics is an interesting concept. Romantics thought the sublime was the highest aesthetic and the sublime is terrifying. Bach is kind of terrifying too. Even the works that aren't praising Jesus, the God who bled to death from being murdered by humans.