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Inquiry on the Nature of Art
21
- In these new ways of life, the arts disseminate ideas which are exclusively human. These ideas are ingrained in material objects and relate to desire, value, interest, hate, affection, encouragement and so forth.
- Moreover, art foster ideas in an exclusively human way, via aesthetic forms, thus developing the human ability to perceive.
- The virtual world of an artwork must be recognizably ours and intriguingly strange in order to work for the audience. Thus, a work of art develops curiosity, empathy, and reflection, fundamental features of human nature.
- A work of art directly enriches the personalities of its author and audience because it develops new “faces” of their alter egos. These faces are able to understand that new work, its language, its new aesthetics and new interpretations of human-to-human and human-to-universe relations.
- The arts develop the spectrum of the simplest human senses via the development of new genres and kinds of art.
- The arts continuously further and deepen the basic sensations of space, time, and movement.
- The arts develop the sense of historical time and universal space, which translates into the sense of the total unity of humankind throughout time and space, particularly beyond national boundaries.
- It is the arts which develop the basic of all basics of the human way of life—dialogue or free communication.
- It is through art that people develop, employ, and reveal creativity and freedom, their most powerful and fundamental abilities.
If we were to go farther back in time to when there was virtually no art, we would find that no human way of life had yet developed. The arts create humanity, amount to it, and vice versa—no humanity emerges beyond the arts. It is noteworthy that humanity is measured in all possible dimensions here: ethics, aesthetics, feelings, thoughts— all that make a human being specifically human.
