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" Seek the truth and run from

those who claim to have found it "

after André Gide

The Value of Art

May 22nd, 2011

If art, then, is a process of discovery about ourselves and about life, if it brings us delight and joy, then surely it follows that we should not live without it. The great artists have always been able to communicate something new; they have penetrated so deeply into an experience that they have brought back some fresh vision: some new relationship of words, or new relationship of sound in music:a deeper insight into human beings: whatever it happens to be; they have uncovered some intense reality that lies behind all the broken and dissonant life around us; they have discovered a fundamental unity that lies at the heart of things.   –    Dorothy Elmhirst

2 Responses to “The Value of Art”

  1. Thank you. It’s been my argument this week – around a perspective wanting to limit art to something that doesn’t touch us too deeply – (it has to be objective, detached etc) and with that, if it does go too deeply – it should be termed as ‘therapy’. I am insistent art HAS to go as deeply as it can, for as artists we must work with our visceral being, our true life experiences and perceptions. That is our raw material. Ultimately. Got a bit winded. But back on the horse now. This post helped and I hold my ground 🙂

  2. But this is a silly statement, that if art gets to deep it is therapy. Art can be used as a means of therapy indeed, and what is wrong with that? ‘Objective art’ comes to me as a strange contradictory in terms, because like the man said ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder’.

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