Art has to be entertaining. If not, it will fail to communicate with its audience in any constructive way and any message that it might carry will be lost. Any song you write about love that doesn’t entertain the ear, will be discarded… and its message of love will be dissolved by the sounds of boredom and indifference of your listener.
The same applies to all forms of art. Directors know that once people start snoring during their movies, they’ve lost the game. Writers, painters… they all know that once you fail to entertain your reader/viewer, any chance you had at communicating your emotions and your beliefs, is evaporated faster than hydrogen on a bright sunny day in the heart of Cairo.
That being said, art being entertaining is one thing… and art being “entertainment” is another.
A good example here is the magician. He is an entertainer and his goal is by definition self-explanatory… to entertain with the use of magic. What he does takes tremendous skills, an abundance in talent and dedication to his work. By being an entertainer, does he care if the members of his audience become more informed and more knowledgeable individuals after his show? No… Actually, the less they know about what they have just seen, the greater the entertainment. Does the entertainer concern himself with the enrichment of his audience’s spiritual state? And by saying “spiritual”, I do not mean the religious interpretation of the term. A person enhances his “spirit” by acquiring information, knowledge, ideas, perceptions and a greater understanding on a subject which he did not possess before becoming exposed to the source of that information. So can a magician enrich his audience’s spirit? Yes… he can. Is it mandatory though because he is an entertainer? No… it’s not.
I believe this is the core difference between an artist and an entertainer. When art is created simply to serve its self and satisfy the tastes of individuals by providing them with a short, joyful experience, without elevating their knowledge-base or introducing a new perspective or understanding on the issue it concerns its self… then the artist seizes to be an artist and transforms into an entertainer. That is the point when art becomes a product, and its core function is no longer to contribute, to expand, to enrich or to elevate its field… but to be consumed. A short-term action which stimulates the brain in a passive way, creating a positive emotional reaction, which as pleasant as it may be, once its influence passes by, leaves you in no greater spiritual state than you were in before. Another product which serves the exact same function is of course, the use of drugs.
There are great examples of entertainers who have managed to entertain successfully throughout their careers, while simultaneously being a tremendous source of knowledge and originality. They provide their audience with new ideas, new perceptions and raise issues which could only benefit our culture, elevating their own work to a creative level which is very difficult to reach. A good example of this is the field of stand-up comedy. When entertainers like George Carlin, or Eddie Izzard got on stage, they didn’t just want for their audience to have a good time. They wanted their audience to have a good time and leave the theater more informed and more knowledgeable. Entertainment wasn’t enough, there had to be a lasting, cultural and spiritual gain for the people to take home. These entertainers, subsequently, become something more than entertainers… they become artists. Another great example is painting. When Picasso introduced cubism, he achieved not only in creating entertaining visual work, but he also succeeded in enriching the art of painting with a new style, new methodology and elevated his own artistic field to a new level. Picasso didn’t just entertain his viewer… he evolved his viewer’s perception and understanding of beauty and composition.
Creating beauty in art is beautiful…
Creating art because you need to see beauty is beautiphol.
In literature and the film industry, the entertainment mechanisms have overshadowed the artistic mechanisms and the market is overloaded with works of either very slim spiritual contribution, or very often not any at all. I have recently read a book in the Sci-Fi genre which had an interesting plot (I do not enjoy hammering down other authors or their work, so I will not mention the title) and I was astonished by how little difference it made to my “spirit” once I finished reading it. It literally gave me nothing that I could possibly keep. There was a formula there; With a fixed plot, fixed characters, a fixed environment for the plot and the characters to work in, and their aim was simple… to provide a fix. Did I enjoy it? Yes, it was an entertaining book, extremely well written and the plot kept me interested. But it failed to find a good balance between art and entertainment, leaning entirely towards the latter, I suppose due to marketing reasons. It had nothing to offer to its reader other than an instant positive emotional satisfaction which is doomed to fade away and leave back nothing unchanged. Do I consider it as a work of art? I do not. And allow me to explain why…
The product and desired result of sexual activity is of course the orgasm. You can get an orgasm by making love to your partner or by masturbating. The difference is that by making love, you can gain more than just an orgasm. While with masturbation, you only get an orgasm. If the action of writing a book which only strives to provide me with an “orgasm” is considered “art,” then what do you call the act of masturbating in order to get an orgasm?…
“… making love?”
The following quote by Ernst Fischer summarises and expresses my own personal artistic motivations perfectly. And since I am nowhere near Fischer’s level or articulation and writing skills, I have nothing to add.
“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable… and help to change it.” -Ernst Fischer
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