Scribbles - Raw Notes Regarding Art

God may have taken seven days to create life itself - I'm slower and work on a smaller scale

These are some raw notes for an article I've been working on for months. They also form part of an argument I'm writing in support of an arts-related not-for-profit group. I lost some of the notes when my Treo (and the SD card) slipped out of my pocket during a drunken skateboarding adventure on Granville St. in Vancouver the evening of September 10th.

Art codifies beliefs

It simplifies aspects of life and organizes them so others may have measured experiences.

Art (or the artist) identifies, explains or resolves problems of society (relationships, technology, ambitions).

Art makes memorable the rules of conduct, gives insights to character, and draws conclusions that society finds useful.

Art imagines, defies constraints, overcomes, achieves the necessary place to allow the various human dynamics and urges (full) expression and (full) voice.

Art creates paradigms that allow us to perceive the invisible, to touch the intangible, step outside the ordinary, stop time, 'slip the surly bounds of earth and touch the face of God'.

Art is a spiritual activity. Only a creative force can bring art into being.

Art and Culture

People want to repeat culture - that's what culture is - an expression, aesthetic or otherwise, of a group's values, ideas or goals and ambitions. The songs they sing, their fashion, the way they decorate themselves or their environment positions them with or against ideas or values, with or against nature, with or against themselves as individuals or as groups.

To restrict this use in order to 'protect' copyright or 'control' reproduction of art is destructive to its purpose. An artist who creates a 'work' of art does not create a commercial object first but creates, rather, a new expression of the culture in which she resides. The art belongs to the community: it belongs to those who use it to express their lives or beliefs.

The commercial exploitation of the work is, and should be, protected on behalf of the artist or copyright holder. But non-commercial use is not protected , nor should it be.

The Necessity of Art

art restores equilibrium to life
art as decoration
art as investment
art as objective realism

art as a creative process - deliberately limited and isolated from life

a persons stops creating or creates on an automaticity - the willingness to create art reestablishes the willingness to create life and thus restores the feeling of being alive (hypothesis)

art as magic

art creates wordless communication between individuals

art distracts and entertains