Artistic Function Quotes

Like every Canadian, I have been taught that one of the most important functions of art is to supply and elaborate the myths and narratives of nationhood.

Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us.

To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.

It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

Art indeed is a term referring to the social source and to the social utility of creative acts.

Artwork operates on two different levels: On one level, there's artwork as a mode of expressivity, and then there's the other side, where the image is a construction that is meant to engage in a discursive field in order to perform a particular function.

I can't usually stomach a project after I finish it, but for those days and weeks and months that it's new to me, I do listen to it, and it might change over time, but it's about function.

Who would dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?

Art can excite, titillate, please, entertain, and sometimes shock; but its ultimate function is to ennoble.

Those who are not very concerned with art want poems or pictures to record for them something they already know - as one might want a picture of a place he loves.

Painting doesn't have a function, not in the way that music or film does... I mean, you can dance to music. Music can be used for a soundtrack, so it has a function in that sense, beyond itself. But painting doesn't... But I do believe that painting has a purpose.

The function of music is to release us from the boredom of existence.

The true function of art is to criticize, embellish and edit nature… the artist is a sort of impassioned proof-reader, blue penciling the bad spelling of God.

Architecture falls between art and airports. It's pragmatic-it helps you get from point A to point B. But it also works as art. It makes you think twice. It inspires you. It brings you back to yourself.

I mean, art for art's sake is ridiculous. Art is for the sake of one's needs.

In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.

The way I approach this thing, when I started to get my head screwed on straight and really trying to make something of myself as an artist, when I was 19 or 20, it became more about function for me. Like, what is this song doing to you? What is the function of this type of artform? What is it doing?

The primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.

Art is either a complaint or appeasement.

Art in its highest form is art that serves and instructs society and human development.

The problem of making the inner meet the outer of today is, of course, the function of the artist.

For me, one of the things art has to examine is how to live your life, and unless it's doing that, it doesn't work for me.

The function of artists is "the mythologization of the world."

Theatres, actors, critics and public are interlocked in a machine that creaks but never stops. There is always a new season in hand and we are to busy to ask the only vital question which measures the whole structure. Why theatre at all? What for? Is it an anachronism, a superannuated oddity? Surviving like an old monument or a quaint custom? Why do we applaud and what? Has the stage a real place in our lives? What function can it have? What could it serve? What could it explore? What are its special properties?

You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, although it can adopt that style.