“Purpose of Art”

QUOTES

The highest purpose is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation. (John Cage)

The role of art is not to express the personality but to overcome it. (T. S. Eliot)

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. (Oscar Wilde)

When you see what you’re here for, the world begins to mirror your purpose in a magical way. It’s almost as if you suddenly find yourself on a stage in a play that was written expressly for you. (Betty Sue Flowers)

The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint… (Keith Haring)

My aim in painting is to create pulsating, luminous, and open surfaces that emanate a mystic light, in accordance with my deepest insight into the experience of life and nature. (Hans Hofmann)

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. (Carl Gustav Jung)

It’s the role of the artist to pursue content. (Anish Kapoor)

The purpose of art is nothing less than the upliftment of the human spirit. (Pope John Paul II)

I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I’m here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me, an observer, an observer. (Maurice Sendak)

The purpose of art is to open a door to other dimensions. (Author unknown)

Paradoxically man’s capacity for aesthetic enjoyment may have been his most practical characteristic for it is at the root of his discovery of the world about him, and it makes him want to live. - Cyril Stanley Smith

…USEFULNESS…
Cultivating and transplanting flowers, says Smith, preceded crop agriculture, and “playing with pets probably gave the
knowledge that was needed for purposeful animal husbandry.” He speculates that “pleasurable interactive communal activities like
singing and dancing” gave birth to language itself. This leads him to the idea that “aesthetic curiosity has been central to both genetic and cultural evolution.” -Cyril Stanley Smith