What is Art for? I have my own conjecture about that. We need created images for the same purpose ancient men did their cave paintings, or about.
It is a matter of narration and control. A matter of dispelling the unknown.
Why narration? According to Jerome Bruner's theory, human mind knows by narration. A baby starts to know the world building and learning stories about it. The narrative pattern is deeply inside human nature, and it comes before the language. That's why images are the first elements of our narrative experiences of knowledge.
This is a conjecture, of course. A model. I like it but I don't take it as a fact.
Creating images and watching created images are really primordial needs. What is the peculiarity of created images? Their being artificial. A drawing or a painting are a fictional representation of something (it works also for abstract art, but I'll talk about that in another post). A created image is something that is actually in front of my eyes but it can't harm me, it's not real. Primitive men painting hunting scenes in their caves didn't try just to propitiate the outcome of their hunt. They wanted also to dispel their fears. They wanted to control the unknown.
A created image is something you control. Both drawing it and watching it have also this hidden effect.
I think our need to watch created, artificial images comes both from our innate istinct to know by narration and from our desire of control.
This is a basic model, as I said. How can it fit to Art as we know it? Is it enough to describe Art? It is not.
Art, in our society, is not just about creating original and quality images. It is also a legacy each individual has for training his taste and to growing his identity.
We are a social species that teaches to its sons by the social environment (family, school, museums and so on). Doing that created a cultural shared fabric for each community we belong to - even beyond national borders, of course. André Malreux expressed this idea about the artistic legacy of our culture in his book "Museum Without Walls"
How can the model of art as "narration to know the unknown" and Malraux concept of transnational museum combine together? In my opinion and in my conjecture, it happens individually in each one's building and managing of identity.
Probably my English is not good enough to say what I mean, but I'm trying.
The growth of each individual is a series of steps in building an identity and a personality. In this path the "narrative pattern" and the non verbal learning never stop working. That's why we continously need created images to create story to elaborate our experiences, even the innermost ones. For someone the shared cultural fabric is enough. For others it's not. In both case we, as a society, know we need artworks, and places to share them.
(All this is just a model, and surely it is not enough, expecially looking at the future)
The next item to bring up, at this point, should be: do we need to own artworks?
Thx to 