Aesthetics – Michael Newberry

Celebrating a little bit tonight, lol, with a cup of coffee. I finished Part One of my inaugural attempt at a book. Already been copy edited, thumps up. Finished are the Intro plus 6 chapters, and 17,000 words. Some of the ground will be familiar to artists and art historians, but I hope it will make deep inroads in the psychology of art and give sense of these artists being alive and transcending time.

This is one of the paragraphs from the 3rd Chapter, Trepidation, Art is Not Tangible and Yet …

The early artist would have been shifting valuable efforts away from life-sustaining work towards the abstract pursuit of art. All animals engage in life-sustaining action, but it would appear as if the artist was rejecting this. Visual art, then as now, has no utilitarian purpose, none whatsoever. Art could not mend things, carve arrows, and build fires. It was not a tool. It did not give warmth, shelter, food, or security. In practical terms it was useless. Diverting resources for such an senseless art adventure would be perceived as a psychosis, the artist having a partial or total break with reality.