What is art? Art began with a problem. Art is always associated with problems. Art is sinful man trying to create a sinless literature. Art is an escape from trouble. Or art is facing the trouble head on. The purpose of both efforts is to find solution to that trouble. Jealousy pulls my heart to strokes of creation. Loneliness drives my pen. My pain drips onto my paper. I create a friend to talk with because no one hears me.
Problems add fuel to the fire that bakes art.
Art is not pretty picturesque adorning of walls, or scatterbrained attempts to create something uncanny. That is creativity or innovation.
What if man never sinned against God? What if the forbidden apple never happened? What if we live in an utopia, a perfect world? Would there have been the art? What would fuel the fire? What would press the hearts of people so much so that they find it necessary to escape. If the world we live in was perfect, what would be point of dreaming for a better world.
Art tells us that there is more. Art seeks God, even unconsciously.
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What does it mean then? Heaven will be the end of art?
Ben Ning, Creative Practitioner