Art: Spiritual or Emotional? (the passion, soul, America, experience, recall)

[Runt]

Okay, I've changed my mind. We DO need a philosophy forum! I'm sorry anyone who thinks this does not belong here... I'm not sure where else to put it...
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In A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man James Joyce writes, "Beauty expressed by the artist cannot awaken in us an emotion which is kinetic or a sensation which is purely physical. It awakens, or ought to awaken, or induces, or ought to induce, an esthetic stasis, an ideal pity or an ideal terror..."

Do you think kinetic responses are merely physical, instinctive emotions (such as desire and loathing) that impell one to "go toward something" or "go from something", or do you think a kinetic response is something that incites one toward action? How then do you personally define "proper esthetic art"? Does it have to arrest all emotion in the viewer and hold them immoile physically and emotionally, and would this not then be the antithesis of emotion--apathy? Or is the response above the physical and emotional: spiritual? Would an inspirational poem, music that invokes a desire to dance, or a psalm that propells one to pray not be art if it drives one to action? If art is spiritual, what kind of response must it invoke? What kind of art is spiritual?

[Alaric]

Yeah, that forum might not be such a bad idea - religious philosophy, if that title could include this sort of discussion. Or they could just rename this one.

I haven't heard the term 'kinetic responses' before, but I can certainly sympathize with the idea that art shouldn't just be about invoking gut reactions in people. Its the connection between the emotion, their conscious and unconscious view of the world, and their subsequent actions; and there can be no incitement towards action without the initial emotions (although they don't have to be quite instinctive). Like Hume said, 'Reason is, and ought only to be, a slave of the passions.' Seeing a beautiful painting or an exhibition of stuffed puppies cause reactions in you that you don't control, based on your past experiences, and may then cause you to see things differently, and perhaps act differently. A well-painted landscape may cause you to feel 'at peace', and to reflect on your appreciation of nature, recall childhood summers, perhaps - and then the feeling dissapates. To provoke a response strong enough to induce different actions would need to strike your feelings about which there was some ambiguity; the art (whatever form it takes) then helps you 'clean up your thoughts' enough to become an impetus for action.

As for spiritual art, I think the same applies as above, just regarding your own place in the world and understanding of self rather than how you relate to others.

I don't think causing someone to be held immobile can be called inducing apathy - its undoubtedly causing the cogs to turn up top, or they wouldn't be interested.

[Master Hoomer]

Art is about the nature of conciousness,,,..

all art is spiritual....imo

[painted wolf]

you can't look at Historical or eaven modern Native American art without looking at it from a spiritual point of view... everything was spiritual, it couldn't be removed from life.
Now as an Artist and a Native American is all my art spiritual... no, the art I produce for the modern market is more often than not empty of my spirituality... the art I do for cultural reasons yes, that is spiritual. Every colour, every disign has meaning tied to my spiritual being or that of the person I am doing the work for.
Its a strange ballanceing act.

wa:-do

[Lightkeeper]

I believe art comes from our Center.

[dudley thoth]

"You may of noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends don't see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then you turn to your friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which others are curiously ignorant of - something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through... Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age you were looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught the ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself - you would know it. Beyond all doubt you would say "Here at last is the thing I was made for". We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want... ...If we lose this, we lose all." (C.S Lewis ' the problem of pain', 1940, p.116)

"...it is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinquished both from happiness and pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. Apart from that, and considered only in its quality, it might almost equally be called a particular kind of unhappiness or grief. But it is the kind that we want. I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world." (C.S Lewis 'surprised by joy', 1955, p.20)

[Rex]

Originally Posted by Runt

Okay, I've changed my mind. We DO need a philosophy forum! I'm sorry anyone who thinks this does not belong here... I'm not sure where else to put it...
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You happy Runt?

:

[Runt]

LOL, yeah :P

[Master Vigil]

I believe true art cannot be made by just the hand, or true lyric by the mouth. It has to be produced from the soul. And our soul can imprint in these products allowing audience to tap into it. This makes a good painting, or a good ballad. For any artist or musician can tell you. There is a difference between painting a picture, and REALLY painting a picture!! And there's a difference between playing or singing the notes, and REALLY making music!! I also believe our emotions is the output of our souls. Through my experiences with the spirit world, the soul changes with the emotions. Whether the soul changes the emotions, or the emotions change the soul I'm not completely certian of. But the correlation is a certainty. Atleast in what I have experienced. Of course I don't expect for a minute that all of you will believe me. But it's interesting if you think about it.

[Anwar]

I am thinking that Art that causes the viewer to become immobile is actually just engaging that person.