Does art need purpose or meaning?

Must art have to have a purpose or meaning within? Modern art begs this question because the art found in galleries and museums is often confusing and seemingly absurd. In some circles like academia and teaching, there is an expectation, even a pressure, to have art imbibed with meaning, there has to be a narrative or idea. Modern art is conceptual or abstract in the galleries, considered serious art, and pretty art is seen as stale, for commercial purposes and not properly respectable art. There is also the expectation of the art consumer: do we all want deep meaning in our art?

Firstly, we need to recognise two relationships here: the artist vs the art and the art vs the public. The public gets to draw conclusions about the art made; the artist has no authority or even control over how the art is seen, accepted, or interpreted. Art also always lives in a context; we can change the meaning of art by where we consume it. An image in an art gallery seems slow, and more carefully consumed, but the art on the phone is just one of the thousands of trivial images thrown away.

The other relationship is the art to the artist. As artists, we often struggle to find meaning in the art and our lives and careers. We ask ourselves why we are doing this. Why does this painting matter? What am I trying to achieve here?

Meaning in art is complex and paradoxical as informed by my Buddhist leanings. Art is made for different reasons and to convey different things; sometimes, it’s ideas; other times, it offers up experiences; we forget life is supposed to be fun.

Art for Art Sake

A truth often forgotten or never thought of in its art doesn’t require meaning. Like a sunset, art is a sensual experience that helps us unwind; analysing it is unnecessary. Art doesn’t have to have meaning, as shown by Abbot McNeil Whistler and the movement of Formalism. Here, composition with colour, line, shape, texture, and other perceptual aspects matter rather than content or meaning.

Artists can create art to look good merely. Conceptual art focuses on ideas, but Formalist and Minimalist art rejects them; it’s just colour and shapes, and there is no message or purpose. Buddhism also looks at life and art in the same way. Zen, in particular, understands it’s about being here and now, mindful of our sensory world.

I’m reminded of what Alan Watts, the populariser of Buddhism and Daoism, says about the purpose of dancing.

‘The sound of the rain needs no translation. In music, one doesn’t make the end of the composition the point of the composition… Same way in dancing, you don’t aim at one particular spot in the room… The whole point of dancing is the dance.’

Alan Watts

The purpose of the dance is the dance, what is called an Autotelic or ‘self-purpose’ activity. Purposeless is where we have fun, just as kids will play without direction or aim—the meaning comes from the doing, the activity, and the experience. This is my view of art; it can and often does have a message. Politics, beauty, ideas, and feelings can all be found in art. However, some art needs no message; consider Black Square by Malevich, which has no form, subject, message, or narrative. There’s nothing to get, no idea to apprehend, so art for art’s sake.

Art for sake is often derisorily looked at as mere decoration, that value judgement is not held by all. In the far east the decorative arts are held in high regard. It’s elitism, the fine arts looking down their noses at other forms of art and seeing them as inferior.

Self-obsessed

The anger over concept art is both hypocritical and ironic. People get upset looking at abstract art because it doesn’t meet their expectations, as if it is supposed to.
Art without a message highlights our narcissistic self-absorption and our egotism.

We strut around art galleries (and life), grasping for meaning and purpose, expecting it to all make sense, demanding the world bend to satisfy our neediness. However, the world, including art and artists, is not obligated to us in any way. It’s our insecure ego that’s the problem.

It’s the same teachings of the Buddha. We grasp for answers and suffer or get upset because we don’t get what we want. Those who argue that art must have a purpose are fettered to their expectations and dragged along by neediness.

Something is compelling and upsetting about aimlessness and purposelessness because they are so foreign to how we usually work and live. Looking into the void, it becomes a wellspring of creativity and authenticity. Conceptual and Postmodernist art, especially comedy, from Monty Python to Deadpool, challenges the self-centred belief that art has to be a certain way.

The purpose of purposeless art is to remind people that art and life don’t need a purpose; they’re there to be enjoyed, just like dancing. Let art be what it is; the experience washes over you through you and let what happens to arise and fall.