Everyone who has shopped with me all knows that I love random unique ornaments, toys or whatever silly things I can keep and look at it for hours with joy and admiration. Sometimes I keep things that people would throw away like boxes, broken pencil or buy useless stuffs that not many wants to spend such amount of money on, such as this handmade kaleidoscope I got in Seattle. The reason is that I LOVE it. Simple yet deep enough that I decided to buy it right away.
Below is a very nice piece of writing about the uselessness of art which still makes people deeply appreciate it just because it is admirable.
Since art is useless as this kaleidoscope is useless, you may think I’m insane
But since art is useless and I’m deeply in love with it, It can be excused
Hope you like it and understand my insanity buying silly art stuffs =)
“We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.
All art is quite useless.“
– Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)
My dear Sir,
Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility. If the contemplation of a work of art is followed by activity of any kind, the work is either of a very second-rate order, or the spectator has failed to realise the complete artistic impression.
A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers. Of course man may sell the flower, and so make it useful to him, but this has nothing to do with the flower. It is not part of its essence. It is accidental. It is a misuse. All this is I fear very obscure. But the subject is a long one.
Truly yours,
Oscar Wilde
COLLECTED.
Original Link: http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/01/art-is-useless-because.html
Oliuoliu Scrittura 