What is the purpose of art?

This is a question with many many answers.

I’d like to explore a few that resonate with me here. You can find a whole series of videos on this on my social media if you’re interested! And this will probably continue to be editing as I explore more purposes with clients.

I think the purpose of art has rightly changed many times. Art is meant to speak to us in our present moment, it is meant to resonate with our culture, our times. So the purpose inevitably shifts. Here are a few purposes that land with me, and that I speak about at length.

Awe.

Perhaps one of the most lovely purposes is simply to generate more awe.

I find that beauty is being disregarded as surface and vain lately. I think throwing out beauty standards is a must, I am for that. But I am not for throwing out beauty as valueless. Beauty makes the world more precious to us. How we define beauty is what is important.

Allowing yourself to be moved into a state of awe and reverence feels like a sacred act to me. We live in a world dominated by the mundane. It is the rare person that really appreciates beauty and moments of awe in the world. It seems to me that one of our largest ills as a society is our lack of awe. Without it, the loss of life, the loss of ecosystems, the loss of quality of living are all normalized.

Art has the potential to move us into a state of greater reverence. It has the potential to bring our focus and attention to what is precious and good in the world. That feels critical to me.

Celebrating our values and priorities.

Art depicts our cultures and our moment. Contemporary art anyway. It helps us gain an understanding of the collective.

It helps us societally understand what we’re grappling with and thinking about. Art can celebrate our values both individually and collectively. You can use the art in your home to align you with what you truly care about, to help you center that more fully and prominently in your daily life. And collectively, if you are an influential collector, the pieces you buy become indicative of our broader culture’s taste.

The art market points to what we are hungering for, what we want more of. Or, what we have in abundance and want to celebrate.

To counteract mediocrity

Living with art, making art, loving art are all ways to defy the gravitational pull of mediocrity. Life can be mundane, depressing, grey.

Prioritizing art, in whatever way, is a means of centering beauty and vibrancy. Art keeps us curious, in praise, shocked, moved. It turns a style-less house into a personal expression of delight. It is a way to explore play and color, memory, nostalgia.

To point us toward a better future

I really believe artists are the key to a more healed and whole future.

Artists envision what is possible.

They help us make sense of what we are living through, and draw our attention to our potential. They allow us to envision what could be, to give real visuals to what a healed family could look like, a healed planet, a healed self. They offer us images that we can look at and say that, I want that, I want to move into alignment with that potential future.

To bring us into a closer state of being human

Meaning, out of the thinking mind and into intuition, into feeling states, into the simple being-ness we have the privilege to experience.

We in Western society spend a lot a lot of time in our heads. Way too much time. Art continually insists we bring intuition, responsiveness and feelings back into the conversation. They don’t have to be the whole conversation, but they have to be in the room.

These purposes can all be a part of your strategic approach as an art collector. If any of them excite or resonate with you, consider including them as a factor when you are making buying decisions and cultivating a collection.