I was thinking about art and play (the subject of my research paper), this morning. More specifically what insights it might give us about the purpose of art, by thinking about the purpose of play. I have been coming to the conclusion that art (like play) is about communication. However, is the purpose of play really communication? Group play perhaps teaches about cooperation, but solitary play doesn't.
Ellen Dissanayake talks about art as process of "making special". She noted that artists liked this definition, but scientists hated it (to paraphrase!). With a foot in both camps, I can see why! Certainly as an 'artistic definition' of art, I really like it. I really like it's simplicity, but robustness. It speaks to a universal-ness that we have perhaps lost sight of. It also makes me reflect on how we talk about art as a activity, but experience art as a process or even just a behaviour. We don't do this to play although, perhaps tellingly, we devalue it in the process. We see play as something everyone does. We don't identify people as 'play-ists' ('player' has come to have its own connotations that we irrelevant here). People don't train to 'play'. People don't pay thousands to watch people play. People expect people (usually children) to play for it's own sake, with no expected outcome, and no expected material gain to themselves or society as a whole.
But perhaps this gets us close to where the dog is buried? Certainly in english-speaking culture, play is dismissed and devalued. Adults would never say they like to play (and when they do, it is taken to have sexual connotations). Adults are allowed to have 'hobbies and interests', but even these are tinged with disapproval and flippancy. They are seen as slightly embarrassing obsessions to be kept well-separated from the workspace. The self-respecting individual doesn't really have time for anything except work. Play is not work and in a 'productive' society, work trumps all.
And if play is not seen as work, perhaps by trying to 'elevate' art to the status of work, we are creating a raft of problems? We are immediately 'fighting on the back foot'. We are taking a human behaviour, and saying some people should be paid to do it. To justify this, we create social pressure to define a purpose. We risk denigrating those that would do it for fun. We create an exclusivity on something that all humans (and perhaps other animals) just naturally do.
Imagine if we did this to play! Imagine people at parties proudly saying they were 'playists' and complaining that other people play, but they are just doing it for fun, and they don't really understand what a real playist does... If they had been to play-school, then they would get it.. Maybe.. In fact, nobody really understands what playists do except other playists... And even then, opinions vary... But it's all so very unfair... The government should make more money available to playists to let them play... Playing is hard enough as it is...
And so, perhaps this leads to purpose. What is the purpose of art? Is art for pleasure? Social awareness? Beauty? Therapy? Sending a message? Making people think? Community? All those things... And more... Like play, I think art isn't FOR anything. Art simply is. It's a thing humans do. Some of those humans do it to make themselves happy, some of them do it to spread a message, some of them do it to make beautiful things, some of them do it to express things they can't put into words. Some of those people (a very small number) are lucky-enough to be able to make a living from it, but with money comes constraints and expectations... But maybe that's ok?
By knocking art off it's pedestal, are we smashing it? Debasing it? Or are we returning to everyone what always theirs?
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