Why do we create art?

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ok, so i was having a discussion with someone about interaction vs. art

here is what i used to believe: interaction and creation are one in the same; you can't have one without the other. to create is to interact. it's the most natural thing in the world to do. and why do we do it? well, i suppose that's a question you guys could answer, but i'll go ahead and give mine now: i believe sharing what we create is a basic human need. if you're creating something you view as worthwhile, there's going to be at least one other person who will get something out of it, and to be on the producing end of that insight is one of the most rewarding things you could possibly do.

for example, let's say you're a musician and you've just finished what in your opinion is the greatest song you've ever made. you think it's beautiful and you're proud of it, so you share it with others. you play it for your friends, you record it, you upload it to YouTube. the response is sensational. everyone tells you how great it is, how much it made them feel or made them think. this of course makes you feel incredible, so probably your self-esteem soars higher and higher and all this feedback only makes you want to create more music, so you go back to the drawing board and start over again, this time determined to create something even better.

this is where it starts to get tricky. at this point, would you say that this new creation is somehow cheaper because its reasons for ever having come into existence is somehow less personal? maybe it would have been better if you'd never shared this song with anyone. afterall, whether or not you'd have shared the song, it would still be the greatest song you ever made - more ears having heard it doesn't make it so, right?

so basically, the root of all this is: is sharing art always the right thing to do, or sometimes, is it the wrong thing to do? if a person has the need to always show their creations to other people, does that somehow mean they are doing it for the wrong reasons? should there be times when you just create for yourself?

EDIT: i know this is probably a mess of a post, forgive me, it's late where i am and i'm tired but i was having a light bulb moment. i hope someone takes the bait and tries to engage me in this because i'm interested in what y'all think.
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Nice light bulb, ash. I have a few minutes here so these are my first thoughts. I hope I'm properly addressing the topic.

I think that getting over the fear of sharing art is a big hurdle for some people. Many people don't believe that what they create is worth sharing. In fact, many people are totally insecure about what they creatively do and never show it to others because they're too embarrassed and feel they will be told they're lousy. I suppose the internet has become a good way for people to get over this fear which is probably tied to a form of great shyness.

As far as any of your projects with which you decide to follow up your "best work", I don't see how it's cheaper per se. You most likely are trying to express a different side of your creativity with a new project, but I suppose it could be considered "cheaper" if you just decided to toss off "Greatest Work Lite" or "Great 2" or "Almost Great" to see if it catches on as well as your previous success.

By the way, I'm sure many people know this and I don't have too many specific names, but some of the greatest writers, musicians and artists ever have often destroyed work which they thought was subpar without any kind of input or reaction from almost anyone. I can understand doing it because most art and artists are highly emotional, but I grieve a little to know that so many van Goghs were destroyed by the artist himself.
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some of the greatest writers, musicians and artists ever have often destroyed work with they thought was subpar without any kind of input or reaction from almost anyone. I can understand doing it because most art and artists are highly emotional, but I grieve a little to know that so many van Goghs were destroyed by the artist himself.
Exactly. If Kafka had destroyed his work before his death(or rather, if his best friend succeeded at destroying his work which Kafka personally thought was inferior), then we wouldnt have The Trial or The Castle. The Trial is one of the finest novels today. I guess its only normal for a trully gifted artist to loathe his or her work. Its natural that some of these "geniuses" fail to realise their genius, which of course is not a bad thing at all because theres always a reason why such artists feel challenged to out-do themselves.



I think we're built to create. To impose order on chaos. That is a deeply satisfying thing to do, be it turning a field into a garden or a set of paints into a landscape. It is buried deep within us.

Your question about whether or not the "second" work is cheaper is interesting. I think it's different, but not less valuable or genuine. It's just a work designed more to please others than to please ourselves, which is a perfectly valid reason to create something.

Mark's comment about people being afraid of sharing art is definitely true, but I think people who have that fear are approaching the issue sort of backwards. I understand why they would be afraid, but if they think their work might not be worth sharing, that's almost more reason to share it, because sharing it and hearing people's thoughts and getting feedback can help improve it.

I know some people regard this as some low-level form of selling out (modifying what you do or how you do it based on the opinions of others, that is), but I don't. What we think of our own work even if we don't listen to others after revealing it is already influenced by what we hear and see from others before creating it; we can't escape the influence of the thoughts of others, they can only be more or less overt, and part of imposing order on chaos is instilling ourselves with knowledge of reality, big parts of which we can only obtain from things outside ourselves.

Getting back to the titular question: I guess it depends on what you want to accomplish. If you start with the idea that you must express yourself, and that whatever springs forth from your mind must be inherently good because it came from your mind, and you somehow come to believe that you can (and should) cordon off the influence of others to produce something that is as you as possible, then the creation itself is all that matters and soliciting the thoughts of others can only hurt the process. But if you believe (as I do) that the purpose of art is to isolate and illustrate beauty and truth, then sharing it is a very important part of that goal.



I think there are different reasons, but the biggest one is probably the desire for meaning.
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Did you hear about that janitor who lived alone and when he died they found in his apartment a gigantic novel about these girls in some kind of war and all these paintings he made for it? He never showed it to anyone and now that stuff is in a museum.
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Did you hear about that janitor who lived alone and when he died they found in his apartment a gigantic novel about these girls in some kind of war and all these paintings he made for it? He never showed it to anyone and now that stuff is in a museum.
Henry Darger is pretty awesome.



Art is something we create for a variety of reasons. I think that art is a way of preserving time, most of all. Second, I think it's a mode in which the artist processes things -- things that they are personally dealing with, things going on in the world, etc. People painted pictures and drew things in the past because there weren't any cameras around to snap them up and preserve them. If you didn't paint somebody's picture, you had no way of really remembering what they looked like in the past, except through your own memory. People also painted and drew things they imagined. With the creation of the camera, this allowed people not only to preserve things, but also take pictures of new stuff based off their own imaginative ideas. Same thing happened, though, when people drew and painted. Same thing can be done with writing and other forms of art.

But why do we do it? Why are we compelled to even care about it? The deepest reason why it exists in the first place may still be unknown. The answer might even be an artistic response to the phenomena. If art is another way of looking at life, or even another life itself, what was the reason for creating life as we know it outside of art? This might sound like a nonsense answer, especially coming from me, but it seems to me that even the rhythms of the universe might have an artistic beat to them -- for the randomness of things brought about planets, man, animals, nature, everything. Are we something's work of art? You can certainly declare that we're not, but you can say the same thing for Transformers 3. All I mean is that art might be natural - and unstoppable. Art could be like a force of nature. The truest reasons for art existing being unknown - and only through art can we come up with an answer.



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I think we're built to create. To impose order on chaos. That is a deeply satisfying thing to do, be it turning a field into a garden or a set of paints into a landscape. It is buried deep within us.
Creation is literally the exact opposite of imposing order from chaos. It's creating chaos, though chaos isn't quite the right word. A better word is difference. Creation is bringing about more difference. Difference is essentially chaos. Imposing order is the opposite of creation. Imposing order keeps things the same. When you paint a painting or film a film, you are not organizing something that is already there. You are changing what is already there. You are introducing a completely new element that was not there before. Something that is unaccounted for by the past. I could say this a thousand ways.

Not sure how this affects your views on any of this, but seriously... I don't get this imposing order onto chaos idea.
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for example, let's say you're a musician and you've just finished what in your opinion is the greatest song you've ever made. you think it's beautiful and you're proud of it, so you share it with others. you play it for your friends, you record it, you upload it to YouTube. the response is sensational. everyone tells you how great it is, how much it made them feel or made them think. this of course makes you feel incredible, so probably your self-esteem soars higher and higher and all this feedback only makes you want to create more music, so you go back to the drawing board and start over again, this time determined to create something even better.

this is where it starts to get tricky. at this point, would you say that this new creation is somehow cheaper because its reasons for ever having come into existence is somehow less personal? maybe it would have been better if you'd never shared this song with anyone. afterall, whether or not you'd have shared the song, it would still be the greatest song you ever made - more ears having heard it doesn't make it so, right?
If no one cares about your art -- if you're the only one who sees your art -- it hasn't even really become art for anyone other than yourself. Art has no meaning outside of a context, and that context is defined by the persons that interact with the art. I don't know what you mean by cheaper, but the amount of people (more importantly, the different kinds) interacting with the artwork in question changes the artwork itself, because it changes the context.

If you don't share art, your artwork is defined by just your own context. Unless you're a narcissist/megalomaniac, I don't know why you'd want this.

Long story short, the groups of people interacting with an artwork are what give it its meaning. The more different kinds of people that interact with it, the more meanings it will potentially have. The more meanings it has, the more of an artwork it becomes, because we no longer just have a single artwork + context but many.

Still, it is true that the more people involved, the artwork becomes less your own. If you have a large enough audience, the artist's context becomes essentially inconsequential compared to that of the audience. This is called Death of the Author.



Creation is literally the exact opposite of imposing order from chaos. It's creating chaos, though chaos isn't quite the right word. A better word is difference. Creation is bringing about more difference. Difference is essentially chaos. Imposing order is the opposite of creation. Imposing order keeps things the same. When you paint a painting or film a film, you are not organizing something that is already there. You are changing what is already there. You are introducing a completely new element that was not there before. Something that is unaccounted for by the past. I could say this a thousand ways.

Not sure how this affects your views on any of this, but seriously... I don't get this imposing order onto chaos idea.
I think the problem is that you're using "order" in a much more modern way, to denote things like control and predictability, whereas creativity is increasingly defined as the absence of both, but I don't use those words that way. I think both are virtues, and like all Socratic virtues, I don't think they can truly collide.

Art is order because it involves assembling something from disparate, unordered elements. You say this is not organizing what's already there, but how can someone possibly come to that conclusion? The raw elements of all works of art are strewn around the world without purpose or order. The raw ideas are strewn about our minds. To assemble them for a specific purpose is to give them order where before they had none.

You say "difference is essentially chaos," but it depends on what the status quo is and how you're differing from it. If the natural state of the world is chaos, then it is being orderly that is different. And that certainly seems to be the type of world we live in. Look at it thermodynamically: the natural state of the Universe is to tend towards greater disorder. Art is the opposite of entropy.



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Many great "artists" have hated their most widely popular work, or thought it their weakest. I think artists are repetitively searching for something through their work. No matter how you got there, if it inspires, then job done.

"I can't go on. I'll go on." -- Samuel Beckett
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Following up on my response to PN. It occurs to me, somewhat hilariously, that we're having a very similar argument to the one that Gregory and Syme have in The Man Who Was Thursday:

"An artist is identical with an anarchist," [Gregory] cried. "You might transpose the words anywhere. An anarchist is an artist. The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything. He sees how much more valuable is one burst of blazing light, one peal of perfect thunder, than the mere common bodies of a few shapeless policemen. An artist disregards all governments, abolishes all conventions. The poet delights in disorder only. If it were not so, the most poetical thing in the world would be the Underground Railway."

"So it is," said Mr. Syme.

"Nonsense!" said Gregory, who was very rational when anyone else attempted paradox. "Why do all the clerks and navvies in the railway trains look so sad and tired, so very sad and tired? I will tell you. It is because they know that the train is going right. It is because they know that whatever place they have taken a ticket for that place they will reach. It is because after they have passed Sloane Square they know that the next station must be Victoria, and nothing but Victoria. Oh, their wild rapture! oh, their eyes like stars and their souls again in Eden, if the next station were unaccountably Baker Street!"

"It is you who are unpoetical," replied the poet Syme. "If what you say of clerks is true, they can only be as prosaic as your poetry. The rare, strange thing is to hit the mark; the gross, obvious thing is to miss it. We feel it is epical when man with one wild arrow strikes a distant bird. Is it not also epical when man with one wild engine strikes a distant station? Chaos is dull; because in chaos the train might indeed go anywhere, to Baker Street or to Bagdad. But man is a magician, and his whole magic is in this, that he does say Victoria, and lo! it is Victoria. No, take your books of mere poetry and prose; let me read a time table, with tears of pride. Take your Byron, who commemorates the defeats of man; give me Bradshaw, who commemorates his victories. Give me Bradshaw, I say!"

"Must you go?" inquired Gregory sarcastically.

"I tell you," went on Syme with passion, "that every time a train comes in I feel that it has broken past batteries of besiegers, and that man has won a battle against chaos. You say contemptuously that when one has left Sloane Square one must come to Victoria. I say that one might do a thousand things instead, and that whenever I really come there I have the sense of hairbreadth escape. And when I hear the guard shout out the word 'Victoria,' it is not an unmeaning word. It is to me the cry of a herald announcing conquest. It is to me indeed 'Victoria'; it is the victory of Adam."

Gregory wagged his heavy, red head with a slow and sad smile.

"And even then," he said, "we poets always ask the question, 'And what is Victoria now that you have got there?' You think Victoria is like the New Jerusalem. We know that the New Jerusalem will only be like Victoria. Yes, the poet will be discontented even in the streets of heaven. The poet is always in revolt."

"There again," said Syme irritably, "what is there poetical about being in revolt? You might as well say that it is poetical to be sea-sick. Being sick is a revolt. Both being sick and being rebellious may be the wholesome thing on certain desperate occasions; but I'm hanged if I can see why they are poetical. Revolt in the abstract is—revolting. It's mere vomiting."

The girl winced for a flash at the unpleasant word, but Syme was too hot to heed her.

"It is things going right," he cried, "that is poetical! Our digestions, for instance, going sacredly and silently right, that is the foundation of all poetry. Yes, the most poetical thing, more poetical than the flowers, more poetical than the stars—the most poetical thing in the world is not being sick."



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Creation is literally the exact opposite of imposing order from chaos. It's creating chaos, though chaos isn't quite the right word. A better word is difference. Creation is bringing about more difference. Difference is essentially chaos. Imposing order is the opposite of creation. Imposing order keeps things the same. When you paint a painting or film a film, you are not organizing something that is already there. You are changing what is already there. You are introducing a completely new element that was not there before. Something that is unaccounted for by the past. I could say this a thousand ways.

Not sure how this affects your views on any of this, but seriously... I don't get this imposing order onto chaos idea.
But isn't the newness you are introducing, in essence, you? Wouldn't you be considered more of a filter or a conductor, as opposed to an actual element of the work? Isn't each person sort of a unique antenna that tunes concepts and materials to their personal interpretation?
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The Man Who Was Thursday is just a bunch of well written nonsense.