Comments on: Who is art for? http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2010/10/26/who-is-art-for/ Thu, 19 Jun 2014 09:26:37 +0000 hourly 1 By: Ari Joseph http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2010/10/26/who-is-art-for/#comment-561 Wed, 27 Oct 2010 06:30:38 +0000 http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/?p=350#comment-561 I wish I could remember who said this, but one of my old film profs in college cited film as a medium for societies to tell stories about itself. Put another way, Slavoj Zizek calls film “the perverted art” because it doesn’t just tell us how to feel, it shows us. We learn how we’re supposed to respond when someone tells us they love us, when a loved one is sick, when someone hurts us, etc. Sort of like the theory I once read about how nightmares are merely the mind preparing for worst-case scenarios, running through exit strategies in a controlled environment.

Anyway… I gather you’re not necessarily talking about “the arts”, but the plastic or fine arts, which may be a different story. But I would say that at its best, I would hope this is what the plastic arts strive to as well: to show us some sense of how to respond.

I can’t help but think of “The Artist is Present.” All of those images of people crying when sitting down with Marina Abramovich, one has to wonder at the complex set of impulses that were guiding those responses. I think in many ways, the “installation” was an affront to so many ideas of what we consider traditionally to be art (this is probably old news at this point). Obviously this is part of the point.

Was it merely that someone had merely offered to sit down and notice a stranger, no questions asked? Is it a piece about what binds us, or a piece about how lonely we can feel? Does it matter that Abramovich is fairly blind? How does that affect our interpretation of the piece? All of these seem to fit in to the larger questions you bring up, because I do think it has to do with defining collective identities and myth-making.

Sounds like an exciting kickoff to thesis…

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