narrative

There is no universally accepted definition of art. Although commonly used to describe something of beauty, or a skill which produces an aesthetic result, there is no clear line in principle between (say) a unique piece of handmade sculpture, and a mass-produced but visually attractive item. We might say that art requires thought - some kind of creative impulse - but this raises more questions: for example, how much thought is required? If someone flings paint at a canvas, hoping by this action to create a work of art, does the result automatically constitute art?
Even the notion of 'beauty' raises obvious questions. If I think my kid sister's unmade bed constitutes something 'beautiful', or aesthetically pleasing, does that make it art? If not, does its status change if a million people happen to agree with me, but my kid sister thinks it is just a pile of clothes?
Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities; this article focuses primarily on the visual arts, which includes the creation of images or objects in fields including painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, and other visual media. Architecture is often included as one of the visual arts; however, like the decorative arts, it involves the creation of objects where the practical considerations of use are essential—in a way that they usually are not in a painting, for example. Music, theatre, film, dance, and other performing arts, as well as literature and other media such as interactive media, are included in a broader definition of art or the arts.[1] Until the 17th century, art referred to any skill or mastery and was not differentiated from crafts orsciences. In modern usage after the 17th century, where aesthetic considerations are paramount, the fine arts are separated and distinguished from acquired skills in general, such as the decorative or applied arts.
Art may be characterized in terms of mimesis (its representation of reality), expression, communication of emotion, or other qualities. During the Romantic period, art came to be seen as "a special faculty of the human mind to be classified with religion and science”.Though the definition of what constitutes art is disputed and has changed over time, general descriptions mention an idea of imaginative or technical skill stemming from human agency and creation.
The nature of art, and related concepts such as creativity and interpretation, are explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics.
Performing arts are art forms in which artists use their body, voice, or objects to convey artistic expression—as opposed to visual arts, in which artists use paint/canvas or various materials to create physical art objects. Performing arts include a variety of disciplines but all are intended to be performed in front of a live audience.
Types of performing arts
Performing arts may include primary forms, such as dance, music, opera, theatre and musical theatre, and minor or secondary forms like Magic and/or illusion, mime, spoken word, puppetry circus arts, performance art, recitation and public speaking.
Artists who participate in performing arts in front of an audience are called performers, including actors, HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedian" \o "Comedian" comedians,dancers, magicians, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such assongwriting and stagecraft.
Performers often adapt their appearance, such as with costumes and stage makeup, etc.
There is also a specialized form of fine art, in which the artists perform their work live to an audience. This is calledperformance art. Most performance art also involves some form of plastic art, perhaps in the creation of props. Dance was often referred to as a plastic art during the Modern dance era.
Theatre
Main article: TheatreA scene from The Nutcracker ballet ( HYPERLINK "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBeUxXSNiFc" Watchon YouTube).Theatre is the branch of performing arts; concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience, using a combination of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle.Any one or more of these elements is performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style of plays. Theatre takes such forms as plays, musicals, opera, ballet, HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion" \o "Illusion" illusion,mime, classical Indian dance, kabuki, mummers' plays, improvisational theatre, stand-up comedy, pantomime, and non-conventional or contemporary forms like postmodern theatre,postdramatic theatre, or performance art .
Dance
Dance (from Old French dancier, perhaps from Frankish) generally refers to humanmovement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual orperformance setting.
Dance is also used to describe methods of non-verbal communication (see body language) between humans or animals (bee dance, mating dance), motion in inanimate objects (theleaves danced in the wind), and certain music genres.
Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who does this is called a choreographer.
Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as folk dance) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet. In sports, gymnastics, figure skating, and synchronized swimming are dance disciplines while martial arts " HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kata_(martial_arts)" \o "Kata (martial arts)" kata" are often compared to dances.
The visual arts are art forms such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture,printmaking, design, crafts, photography, video, filmmaking and architecture. Many artistic disciplines (performing arts, conceptual art, textile arts) involve aspects of the visual arts as well as arts of other types. Also included within the visual arts are the applied arts[2] such as industrial design, graphic design,fashion design, interior design and decorative art.
The current usage of the term "visual arts" includes fine art as well as the applied, decorative arts and crafts, but this was not always the case. Before theArts and Crafts Movement in Britain and elsewhere at the turn of the 20th century, the term 'artist' was often restricted to a person working in the fine arts(such as painting, sculpture, or printmaking) and not the handicraft, craft, or applied art media. The distinction was emphasized by artists of the Arts and Crafts Movement, who valued vernacular art forms as much as high forms. Art schools made a distinction between the fine arts and the crafts, maintaining that a craftsperson could not be considered a practitioner of the arts.
The increasing tendency to privilege painting, and to a lesser degree sculpture, above other arts has been a feature of Western art as well as East Asian art. In both regions painting has been seen as relying to the highest degree on the imagination of the artist, and the furthest removed from manual labour - in Chinese painting the most highly valued styles were those of "scholar-painting", at least in theory practiced by gentleman amateurs. The Western hierarchy of genres reflected similar attitudes.
Education and training[ HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Visual_arts&action=edit&section=1" \o "Edit section: Education and training" edit]
Main article: Visual arts educationTraining in the visual arts has generally been through variations of the apprentice and workshop system. In Europe theRenaissance movement to increase the prestige of the artist led to the academy system for training artists, and today most train in art schools at tertiary levels. Visual arts have now become an elective subject in most education systems. (See alsoart education.)
Drawing[ HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Visual_arts&action=edit&section=2" \o "Edit section: Drawing" edit]
Main article: DrawingDrawing is a means of making an image, using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface using dry media such as HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphite" \o "Graphite" graphitepencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman.
Drawing goes back at least 16,000 years to Paleolithic cave representations of animals such as those at Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. In ancient Egypt, ink drawings on papyrus, often depicting people, were used as models for painting or sculpture. Drawings on Greek vases, initially geometric, later developed to the human form with black-figure potteryduring the 7th century BC.[5]With paper becoming common in Europe by the 15th century, drawing was adopted by masters such as HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandro_Botticelli" \o "Sandro Botticelli" Sandro Botticelli,Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci who sometimes treated drawing as an art in its own right rather than a preparatory stage for painting or sculpture.[6]Painting taken literally is the practice of applyingpigment suspended in a carrier (or medium) and a binding agent (a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense it means the use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition and, or, other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Painting is also used to express spiritual motifs and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to The Sistine Chapel to the human body itself.
Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers has been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine traditional painting withalgorithm art and other digital techniques. As a result, defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Computer art is by its nature evolutionary since changes in technology and software directly affect what is possible. Notable artists in this vein include James Faure Walker, Manfred Mohr, Ronald Davis, Joseph Nechvatal, Matthias Groebel, George Grie, Olga Kisseleva, John Lansdown, Perry Welman, and Jean-Pierre Hébert.
Computer art is any art in which computers play a role in production or display of the artwork. Such art can be an image, sound, animation, video, CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, videogame, web site, algorithm, performance or gallery installation. Many traditional disciplines are now integrating digital technologies and, as a result, the lines between traditional works of art and new media works created using computers has been blurred. For instance, an artist may combine traditional painting withalgorithm art and other digital techniques. As a result, defining computer art by its end product can thus be difficult. Computer art is by its nature evolutionary since changes in technology and software directly affect what is possible. Notable artists in this vein include James Faure Walker, Manfred Mohr, Ronald Davis, Joseph Nechvatal, Matthias Groebel, George Grie, Olga Kisseleva, John Lansdown, Perry Welman, and Jean-Pierre Hébert.
A Robot Painting is an artwork painted by a robot. It differs from other forms of printing that uses machinery such as offset printing and inkjet printing, in that the artwork is made up of actual brush strokes and artist grade paints. Many robot paintings are indistinguishable from artist created paintings.
One of the first robot painters was AARON, an artificial intelligence/artist developed by Professor Harold Cohen, UCSD, in the mid-1970s. Another pioneer in the field, Ken Goldberg of UC Berkeley created an 11' x 11' painting machine in 1992. Multiple other robotic painters exist though none are currently mass-produced.
Q. If We Appreciate Its Positive Impact, Do We Need to Define Art?
For centuries, if not millennia, people have been emotionally affected - sometimes overwhelmed - by works of art: from Greek Sculpture, to Byzantine architecture, the stunning creativity of Renaissance and Baroque Old Masterslike Donatello, Raphael and Rembrandt, and famous painters of the modern era, like Van Gogh, Picasso and Auguste Rodin. Poetry, ballet and films can be equally uplifting. So while we may not be able to explain precisely what art is, we cannot deny the impact it has on our lives - one reason why public art is worth supporting.
Q. How Does a Definition of the Meaning of Art Help Us?
The very essence of creativity means it cannot be defined and pigeon-holed. Any attempt at doing so, will quickly become out-of-date and thus pointless, even counter-productive. What happens, for instance, if an artist produces something that by popular consensus is "art", but isn't accepted as such by the arts establishment? It's worth remembering that we still can't define a "table" or an "elephant", but it doesn't cause us much difficulty!
Q. Is Art Simply a Reflection of Our Personal Values?
It's fair to say that someone educated in the values of Renaissance art, and who therefore has a reasonable understanding of traditional painting, is less likely to regard postmodernist installations as art, than a person without such an understanding. Similarly, a person who loves TV and thinks museums are generally rather boring and unexciting places, is more likely to be impressed with contemporary video art than someone else who is comfortable with traditional museum exhibitions. Because of this, one might say that a person's attitude to art says more about his or her personal values, than the art itself.
Q. Who Has the Right to Define Art?
Since no consensus among art critics as to the meaning of art is likely to emerge anytime soon, which set of "experts" should be allowed to take charge: Artists, sociologists, historians, lawyers, philosophers, archeologists, anthropologists, or psychologists? After all, the world is full of so-called "experts" - structuralists, proceduralists, functionalists, as well as the usual crop of political theorists like Marxists and so on - who can't agree on what counts as art. So who do we give the job to?
How is Art Classified?
Traditional and contemporary art encompasses activities as diverse as:
Architecture, music, opera, theatre, dance, painting, sculpture, illustration, drawing, cartoons, printmaking, ceramics, stained glass, photography, installation, video, film and cinematography, to name but a few.
All these activities are commonly referred to as "the Arts" and are commonly. classified into several overlapping categories, such as: fine, visual, plastic,decorative, applied, and performing.
Disagreement persists as to the precise composition of these categories, but here is a generally accepted classification.
1. Fine Arts
This category includes those artworks that are created primarily for aesthetic reasons ('art for art's sake') rather than for commercial or functional use. Designed for its uplifting, life-enhancing qualities, fine art typically denotes the traditional, Western European 'high arts', such as:
• DrawingUsing charcoal, chalk, crayon, pastel or with pencil or pen and ink. Two major applications include: illuminated manuscripts (c.600-1200) and book illustration.• PaintingUsing oils, HYPERLINK "http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/watercolour-painting.htm" watercolour, gouache, acrylics, ink and wash, or the more old-fashioned tempera or encaustic paints. For an explanation of colourants, see: HYPERLINK "http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/colour-in-painting.htm" Colour in Painting and HYPERLINK "http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/artist-paints/colour-pigments.htm" Colour Pigments, Types, History.• PrintmakingUsing simple methods like woodcuts or stencils, the more demanding techniques of engraving, etching and lithography, or the more modern forms like screen-printing, foil imaging or HYPERLINK "http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/printmaking/giclee-prints.htm" giclee prints. For a significant application of printmaking, see: Poster Art.• SculptureIn bronze, stone, marble, wood, or clay.
Another type of Western fine art, which originated in China, is calligraphy: the highly complex form of stylized writing.
2. Visual Arts
Visual art includes all the fine arts as well as new media and contemporary forms of expression such as Assemblage, Collage, Conceptual, Installation and Performance art, as well as Photography, (see also: Is Photography Art?) and film-based forms like Video Art and Animation, or any combination thereof. Another type, often created on a monumental scale is the new environmental land art.
3. Plastic Arts
The term plastic art typically denotes three-dimensional works employing materials that can be moulded, shaped or manipulated (plasticized) in some way: such as, clay, plaster, stone, metals, wood (sculpture), paper (origami) and so on. For three-dimensional artworks made from everyday materials and "found objects", including Marcel Duchamp's " HYPERLINK "http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/definitions/readymades.htm" readymades" (1913-21), please see: Junk art.
4. Decorative Arts
This category traditionally denotes functional but ornamental art forms, such as works in glass, clay, wood, metal, or textile fabric. This includes all forms ofjewellery and mosaic art, as well as ceramics, (exemplified by beautifully decorated styles of ancient pottery notably Chinese and Greek Pottery) furniture, furnishings, stained glass and tapestry art. Noted styles ofdecorative art include: Rococo Art (1700-1800), Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood(fl. 1848-55), HYPERLINK "http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/japonism.htm" Japonism (c.1854-1900), Art Nouveau (c.1890-1914), Art Deco (c.1925-40), Edwardian, and Retro.
Arguably the greatest period of decorative or applied art in Europe occurred during the 17th/18th centuries at the French Royal Court. For more, see: HYPERLINK "http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/history-of-art/french-decorative-arts.htm" French Decorative Arts (c.1640-1792); French Designers (c.1640-1792); andFrench Furniture (c.1640-1792).
5. Performance Arts
This type refers to public performance events. Traditional varieties include, theatre, opera, music, and ballet. Contemporary performance art also includes any activity in which the artist's physical presence acts as the medium. Thus it encompasses, mime, face or body painting, and the like. A hyper-modern type of performance art is known as Happenings.
6. Applied Arts
This category encompasses all activities involving the application of aesthetic designs to everyday functional objects. While fine art provides intellectual stimulation to the viewer, applied art creates utilitarian items (a cup, a couch or sofa, a clock, a chair or table) using aesthetic principles in their design.Folk art is predominantly involved with this type of creative activity. Applied art includes architecture, computer art, photography, industrial design, graphic design, fashion design, interior design, as well as all decorative arts. Noted styles include, Bauhaus Design School, as well as Art Nouveau, and Art Deco. One of the most important forms of 20th applied art is architecture, notably supertall skyscraper architecture, which dominates the urban environment in New York, Chicago, Hong Kong and many other cities around the world. For a review of this type of public art, see: American Architecture(1600-present).
What's the Point of Art?
Sceptics say that art is a waste of time. Even the famous poet WH Auden confessed that no poem saved a single person from the Nazi gas-chambers. And while this may sound a rather meaningless statement, it highlights the notion that art has a limited use in our daily life, except in the case of attractive-looking buildings, teapots, cars or clothes.
There are two broad answers: first, applied art is a major branch of art which cannot easily be separated from fine art, because the root of all design (which is the foundation of applied art) is fine art. Second, ever since Homo Sapiensdeveloped the facility of contemplation, he has expressed his thoughts in pictorial form. At the same time, he has continued to appreciate beauty - whether in the form of human faces or bodies, sunsets, animal-skin colours, cathedrals or sculpture. In a nutshell, to create and to appreciate art is to be human. That's the point.
How to Distinguish Good Art from Bad Art?
Not being able to define art doesn't mean that all artworks are good. Trouble is, who decides where good art ends and bad begins?
This popular question may stem from our natural desire to avoid being hoodwinked by snake-oil salesmen dressed up as 'artists', but whatever its origin it is not a particularly important issue. In practice, professional artists need public acceptance. So while temporary art-fashions may occasionally promote works of apparently dubious value, the general public (as well as the artistic community) is unlikely to stand by and allow bad art to become commonplace.
Why Do Art Experts Make Everything Sound So Complicated?
An example of this might be the jargon-infested articles commonly encountered in arts magazines, where nobody seems to use plain language anymore. Other culprits include exhibition catalogues and art books.
The writers of this stuff might say that such jargon is no more than necessary shorthand, and that it is mostly written for other 'experts'. But is this really true? For example, it is almost impossible to find a book with a simple explanation of Cubism. So how does a young student get to understand why Picasso and Braque's revolutionery movement is so important? The same could be said about dozens of things in the world of art. And some abstract art sounds so complicated that we almost need a PhD in order to properly 'comprehend' it. (See next question for examples)
Examples of Meaningless Art Reviews: Why use this Jargon?
Modern reviewers, critics and artists frequently resort to meaningless nonsense when trying to describe a piece of "art". Here are some examples which have been kept anonymous to spare their authors' embarassment. All were taken from press releases or websites of 'respectable' bodies:
Purpose of art
Art has had a great number of different functions throughout its history, making its purpose difficult to abstract or quantify to any single concept. This does not imply that the purpose of Art is "vague", but that it has had many unique, different reasons for being created. Some of these functions of Art are provided in the following outline. The different purposes of art may be grouped according to those that are non-motivated, and those that are motivated (Lévi-Strauss).
Non-motivated functions of art
The non-motivated purposes of art are those that are integral to being human, transcend the individual, or do not fulfill a specific external purpose. In this sense, Art, as creativity, is something humans must do by their very nature (i.e., no other species creates art), and is therefore beyond utility.
Basic human instinct for harmony, balance, rhythm. Art at this level is not an action or an object, but an internal appreciation of balance and harmony (beauty), and therefore an aspect of being human beyond utility.
"Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. Next, there is the instinct for 'harmony' and rhythm, meters being manifestly sections of rhythm. Persons, therefore, starting with this natural gift developed by degrees their special aptitudes, till their rude improvisations gave birth to Poetry." -Aristotle HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art" \l "cite_note-30" [30]
Experience of the mysterious. Art provides a way to experience one's self in relation to the universe. This experience may often come unmotivated, as one appreciates art, music or poetry.
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." -Albert Einstein HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art" \l "cite_note-31" [31]
Expression of the imagination. Art provide a means to express the imagination in non-grammatic ways that are not tied to the formality of spoken or written language. Unlike words, which come in sequences and each of which have a definite meaning, art provides a range of forms, symbols and ideas with meanings that are malleable.
"Jupiter's eagle [as an example of art] is not, like logical (aesthetic) attributes of an object, the concept of the sublimity and majesty of creation, but rather something else – something that gives the imagination an incentive to spread its flight over a whole host of kindred representations that provoke more thought than admits of expression in a concept determined by words. They furnish an aesthetic idea, which serves the above rational idea as a substitute for logical presentation, but with the proper function, however, of animating the mind by opening out for it a prospect into a field of kindred representations stretching beyond its ken." -Immanuel Kant HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art" \l "cite_note-32" [32]
Ritualistic and symbolic functions. In many cultures, art is used in rituals, performances and dances as a decoration or symbol. While these often have no specific utilitarian (motivated) purpose, anthropologists know that they often serve a purpose at the level of meaning within a particular culture. This meaning is not furnished by any one individual, but is often the result of many generations of change, and of a cosmological relationship within the culture.
"Most scholars who deal with rock paintings or objects recovered from prehistoric contexts that cannot be explained in utilitarian terms and are thus categorized as decorative, ritual or symbolic, are aware of the trap posed by the term 'art'." -Silva Tomaskova HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art" \l "cite_note-33" [33]
Motivated functions of art
Motivated purposes of art refer to intentional, conscious actions on the part of the artists or creator. These may be to bring about political change, to comment on an aspect of society, to convey a specific emotion or mood, to address personal psychology, to illustrate another discipline, to (with commercial arts) to sell a product, or simply as a form of communication.
Communication. Art, at its simplest, is a form of communication. As most forms of communication have an intent or goal directed toward another individual, this is a motivated purpose. Illustrative arts, such as scientific illustration, are a form of art as communication. Maps are another example. However, the content need not be scientific. Emotions, moods and feelings are also communicated through art.
"[Art is a set of] artefacts or images with symbolic meanings as a means of communication." -Steve Mithen HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art" \l "cite_note-34" [34]
Art as entertainment. Art may seek to bring about a particular emotion or mood, for the purpose of relaxing or entertaining the viewer. This is often the function of the art industries of Motion Pictures and Video Games.[citation needed]
The Avante-Garde. Art for political change. One of the defining functions of early twentieth-century art has been to use visual images to bring about political change. Art movements that had this goal—Dadaism, Surrealism, Russian constructivism, and Abstract Expressionism, among others—are collectively referred to as the avante-garde arts.
"By contrast, the realistic attitude, inspired by positivism, from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Anatole France, clearly seems to me to be hostile to any intellectual or moral advancement. I loathe it, for it is made up of mediocrity, hate, and dull conceit. It is this attitude which today gives birth to these ridiculous books, these insulting plays. It constantly feeds on and derives strength from the newspapers and stultifies both science and art by assiduously flattering the lowest of tastes; clarity bordering on stupidity, a dog's life." -André Breton (Surrealism) HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art" \l "cite_note-35" [35]
Art as a "free zone", removed from the action of the social censure. Unlike the avant-garde movements, which wanted to erase cultural differences in order to produce new universal values, contemporary art has enhanced its tolerance towards cultural differences as well as its critical and liberating functions (social inquiry, activism, subversion, deconstruction...), becoming a more open place for research and experimentation.[36]Art for social inquiry, subversion and/or anarchy. While similar to art for political change, subversive or deconstructivist art may seek to question aspects of society without any specific political goal. In this case, the function of art may be simply to criticize some aspect of society.
Graffiti art and other types of street art are graphics and images that are spray-painted or HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stencil" \o "Stencil" stencilled on publicly viewable walls, buildings, buses, trains, and bridges, usually without permission. Certain art forms, such as graffiti, may also be illegal when they break laws (in this case vandalism).
Art for social causes. Art can be used to raise awareness for a large variety of causes. A number of art activities were aimed at raising awareness of autism,[37][38][39] cancer,[40][41][42] human trafficking,[43][44] and a variety of other topics, such as ocean conservation,[45] human rights in Darfur,[46] murdered and missing Aboriginal women,[47] elder abuse,[48] and pollution.[49] HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trashion" \o "Trashion" Trashion, using trash to make fashion, practiced by artists such as Marina DeBris is one example of using art to raise awareness about pollution.
Art for psychological and healing purposes. Art is also used by art therapists, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists as art therapy. The Diagnostic Drawing Series, for example, is used to determine the personality and emotional functioning of a patient. The end product is not the principal goal in this case, but rather a process of healing, through creative acts, is sought. The resultant piece of artwork may also offer insight into the troubles experienced by the subject and may suggest suitable approaches to be used in more conventional forms of psychiatric therapy.
Art for propaganda, or commercialism. Art is often utilized as a form of propaganda, and thus can be used to subtly influence popular conceptions or mood. In a similar way, art that tries to sell a product also influences mood and emotion. In both cases, the purpose of art here is to subtly manipulate the viewer into a particular emotional or psychological response toward a particular idea or object.[50]Art as a fitness indicator. It has been argued that the ability of the human brain by far exceeds what was needed for survival in the ancestral environment. One evolutionary psychology explanation for this is that the human brain and associated traits (such as artistic ability and creativity) are the human equivalent of the peacock's tail. The purpose of the male peacock's extravagant tail has been argued to be to attract females (see also HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway" \o "Fisherian runaway" Fisherian runaway andhandicap principle). According to this theory superior execution of art was evolutionary important because it attracted mates.[51]