in concreted afterlife
a friend forever
Caistor Parish Church March 15th @ 13:41:02
Be creative in your own way
It seems obvious that a deliberate product of a human mind should possess some value justifying the thought, work, skill, time, and materials that went into its making, not to mention the investment required of its audience to consider and appreciate (and perhaps even to purchase) it.
Indeed, much of what is created under the creed of “art for art’s sake” today rarely is left to exist in its own right as the ideology might suggest; instead, it ends up being traded and used like so many commodities, culminating in “hype for profit’s sake” or “fashion for celebrity’s sake.”
I believe it is plausible to suggest that art should be founded in creativity.
Researcher Michael Mumford coined a commonly used definition for creativity, which is this: “the production of novel and useful things.” This definition is powerful in that it does not stop at characterizing creative work as being merely unique or different from anything done previously, but also requiring that it should possess demonstrable value.
For visual arts, the simplest and easiest value to accomplish is aesthetic appeal. Accordingly, it also is the least venerable. The staggering amount of exquisitely beautiful creations posted to online media on a daily basis makes even “a dime a dozen” seem overpriced.
This oversaturation of beauty led many connoisseurs to become jaded about aesthetic value as the primary purpose of a work. More extreme art aficionados may go so far as to dismiss the value of beauty altogether.
This is a great shame. Beauty, when used as an ingredient carefully blended with others to produce works of significance, can be a powerful, evocative, and life-enriching force.
—Guy Tal