About the utility of Art

I have read a lot about Art, its meaning, its purpose and about how useful is in the real world.

Do we need Art? What is the purpose of an artist?

My answer it’s no, we don’t need art, the vast majority of my friends and acquaintances have zero interest in art and never have been in an art gallery and the world is still spinning.

Is it about money then? Why invest on art when you can invest in an autographed jersey of a football player or an autographed baseball ball and probably your investment return will be better, there are much more people interested in sports than in arts.

And still, there’s an industry behind Art, there are books, podcasts, magazines, blogs about art. A very small part of the population has certain interest on art and that’s enough to make art. But what is the utility of art? What is the purpose?

I have no satisfactory answer for that.

I have been thinking a lot lately about art as a motor to awakening, and I’m not referring to spiritual awakening or some king of magic and transcendental elevation of your senses or some kind of quantum physics and the power of your positive thinking. No, not at all, I’m thinking on awakening in a most mundane way, something that it’s taking us out of our routine, taking us out of our daily life. I’m going to try to explain it here. Sometimes we are so focused on our routine that we don’t realize about the things on our surroundings, like the sing of a bird or even the tase of our coffee or tea, we’re just trying of being productive and those little things keep us out of focus but it is as if we were living in a nightmare, an unconscious dream of our lives. Well, the mission of art is awaking us off from that routine, it’s not about beauty, it’s not about spirituality or religious or aesthetics in the more egocentric way it’s just about me, myself.

So, when I see a work that shake me, that take me out balance, take me out of my comfort zone that is for me Art and it doesn’t matter what it means, if it is well composed or if it is aesthetically perfect, no because it’s not about beauty, it’s just about me.