Art is Fundamentally Social (2021)

Not all artists are extroverts in the sense that they want to communicate some feeling or some emotions. Some artists are introverts who create art for themselves, who are more interested in the visual effects of colours, lines and shapes, than what it does to others.

Take for example the Dutch artist Peter Struycken, who started as a classical scholed artist, but who in the late sixties used a computer program developed by Stan Tempelaars to randomly select certain patterns instead of rolling some dices by himself. He was interested in the effects of selecting different distributions of patterns. From these experiments he created eight works consisting of black and white squares. These can be found at: http://pstruycken.nl/EnSKS.html

He since continued using computer programs, some developed by himself, but also by others who were more skilled to write programs. For his last sequence of works, which is all about finding a balanced set of colours, he only used a program to find a random distribtion for the squares to avoid any distraction from shapes and/or patterns. It seems he is primary fasinated by colours and their interaction. He has no intention to express any emotions or display his craftmanship. He does like openings of exhibitions of his works. I also get the idea that most visitors do not understand his ideas behind his art works. I get the impression that he has a rather scientific approach to make these art works.

And one could argue that for that reason he is not an artist, but he has been able to live from his autonomous works and commissions.

> In thinking about the nature of art, I have come to believe that the art is a fundamentally social phenomenon; art exists primarily for social purposes.

It's funny because I think this idea is new or even shocking to some, but would be the most obvious thing in the world in other times and places.

In the Renaissance, for instance, I'm sure the artists achieved some amount of personal expression but the art was created to inspire religious feelings in a church or glorify a prince or accomplish some other social goal.

lets not forget not too long ago art was a available only to the rich. the social elements were confined to the whim and contingency of the lords, aristocratics and nobles who deemed art to be so. as we may glean from walter benjamin, the reproducibility of art in a capitalist industry brought art to the 'people'. we now live in an age where 'art' and 'artists' are ubiquitous and available for 'everyone'. these social parameters are beguiling and precarious. machine learning as a factor of human creativity is almost somewhat a meta statement on art as 'art'. a second order logic to this 'social' element. an 'algorithmic' tendencay to achive some 'objective' (german idealist) sensitivity to what art is, within the confines of a subjugate classism. think insta, the labor of some is proliferate to the consumption of many. even the doom scroll is an installation by which we socially engage to pronounce the illusion of an agreement to an objective beauty.

AI also contains "art" in it, from artificium - handicraft.

I am personally not a big believer in the idea that art is just a means to an end (even if that end is something we consider very valuable). This article uses the words "purpose" and "goal" a lot, and it is that aspect that I disagree with, although I would agree that art is phenomenon that can only be considered properly inside of its social context.

That is, saying that a painting is just a tool for the painter to evoke certain emotions or experiences in the viewer (or social goals for the painter, like wealth and status), just as a hammer is a tool for driving nails into wood, is to reduce the painting to a mere instrument.

Art is meaningful to people, and I think that cannot be reduced to art being just a goal-directed tool we use to manipulate/control the world or people around us.