Modern Art as Expressing Emotion

It seems that no matter who you talk to, art to them means the expression of emotion. It has been repeated by mindless drones throughout our culture so much that no one even thinks twice when they hear it. The purpose of art is to express emotion. Of course.

Look! Emotion!

So, the purpose of art is to express emotion because... people... need to know... how the artist feels? because people have a need to have... emotions expressed to them?

No. Let's put an end to this bizarre notion that emotion is an end in itself, that experiencing emotion brought on by no evaluation and leading to no further action is somehow beneficial, and that art exists to make that happen.

I say brought on by no evaluation because thats what modern art paintings try to do, isn't it? Artists like Jackson Pollock would tell you that their splatters of paint show intense emotions or some nonsense like that, but emotions do not come from no where; they cannot come from nothing.

Looking at random paint splashes cannot lead to emotion because emotion comes from judgements and evaluations of elements of reality. You don't get random emotions throughout the day for no reason, but if you see someone getting beaten up, you will probably have an emotional reaction, and the reason you have that emotional reaction is to prompt you into further action, which you need to decide to either take or suppress. Emotions happen because of a reason, and they happen for a reason.

With this in mind its easy to see where modern art has gone wrong. Artists today have bought into some idea that emotions exist in their own independent world and that experiencing them totally cut off from reality is desirable for some reason. The end result of this is paintings which are 'emotional' abstractions that exist independent from reality. Modern artists offer nothing real to evaluate or judge, they just expect you to be moved into arbitrary emotions by meaningless colors and shapes.

So what is the real purpose of art? The real purpose of art is to concretize judgements and evaluations about elements of reality; to bring mental abstractions and ideas about life into physical form. The evidence for this is clear.

What did the first artists paint? Did cavemen make splashes of colors on their walls for decoration or to express how they felt? Or did they draw pictures of things like animals and other humans? Cavemen did not have a need to be intellectual frauds and phonies, so they did not waste any time with anything that resembled what would now be called art. They created images that expressed real world evaluations and judgements. They drew things like animals being hunted because being able to hunt and eat animals meant life to them; it was everything.

Only something so real and important could bring them to produce art, and when they later looked at that art, without language or any complex means of communication, they could all understand. They looked at their drawings and were inspired by something they recognized as important, and this probably lead to great emotions which helped them hunt more animals and survive.

The purpose of art is not just to express emotion; art is not so shallow.

So all of these frauds and their super-reality meaningless emotional abstractions (their splatters of paint, in other words) are out. Pay them no mind. They offer nothing of value to anyone who lives in reality. Support artists who produce paintings that make valuable judgements of real life. Support art work that inspires action and ideas beyond the initial emotions.