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Of course I am not an art critic, theorist or philosopher but I hate this idea of the art necessarily having a purpose. I see it all the time on reddit, variations like "the purpose of art is to [challenge your beliefs/critique society/promote justice/make you think]". However when I think of some of the most regarded artistic masterpieces of the past oftentimes I can discern no higher ideal in them than "this is beautiful" Did this perhaps have some more legible "message" originally? Perhaps, but today there is almost nothing left and it is beloved solely for its beauty. Of course with effort any sufficiently intelligent person can spin out from that various "purposes", for example the all-powerful leftist idea that all art is political and any art that appears apolitical is really just a resounding endorsement of the status-quo in every way, it goes without saying I think this is BS.
The whole idea of a "purpose" being essential in art strikes me as an English-classism. Where we would learn the 5 paragraph "hamburger" style essay and we were instructed to have our entire essay based on a single-sentence thesis about the "message" of the book. I see this high school style approach echoed in Banksy type shit, things that are extremely popular on /r/pics and can generally be summarized with a single-sentence social message like "war is bad" or "capitalism is destroying the environment"
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