There are a seemingly countless number of motivations for producing and consuming art in the modern world. For some, art is a form of escape and pure entertainment. Others want art to challenge their world view and stir them from complacency. Art can be an act of personal therapy or a revolutionary effort. This variety in art's function and meaning led German philosopher Theodor Adorno to open his book of aesthetic theory with the observation that "today, it goes without saying that nothing about art goes without saying." However, for much of the history of the arts it could be argued that they have had a primary function that is generally instructive, at least in an abstract sense. Before the modern era much of that which we now call "art" (that is to say that which functioned beyond what we now refer to as craft) was religious or moralistic in nature. From renaissance painting to 19th century moralist novels, art has often served a fairly didactic role. Even Romantic poetry was often perceived to have an ethical function by many of its practitioners. Shelley was a master of cadence and lyrical verse, but he didn't write poetry for poetry's sake. Even the shorter poems among his masterpieces, such as the brilliant "Lines Written Among the Euganean Hills" is meant to teach its reader about life. Consider the opening lines -
Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of misery -
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on.
If we return to Ruskin, who I have been discussing recently, we can see that one of the reasons for his significant success is found, as George Landow has pointed out, in his ethical, sermonic style which appealed to his moralistic, Victorian readers. Even today, though a didactic concept of art is decidedly unfashionable, many people read novels in a rather instructive way. I obviously don't mean to imply that people are expecting their novels to teach them how to use a smart-phone or change a tire. But they do seem to expect their novels to be more than mere entertainment, and often look for stories to demonstrate how people navigate the complex moral dilemmas and social intricacies in their lives as though they are reading an abstract form of self-help book.
Within the field of visual art there is a long history of instructive material. From renaissance paintings that illustrate biblical stories to the instructions on how to construct Ikea furniture, there are many examples of visual art performing a specifically didactic function. This is a realm of art that was compellingly addressed by James Elkins in his 1999 book The Domain of Images. However, since the modern era, I think it is safe to say that, in terms of instructive power, the primary visual "high" art has been at something of a disadvantage compared to art forms such as, say, literature or theatre. Instead of embracing a directly didactic function, many people see visual art in terms of the ways in which it can raise the profundity of our thoughts and seize upon the sublimity of the natural world. Indeed, this is precisely what Ruskin imagined that the essential role of great art to be. (Obviously the more 'commercial' visual art forms are an entirely different story)
To return to where I began, I would say that these issues raise a dilemma that has faced art in general, but most specifically visual art, since the beginning of the modern age; the dilemma of function. When the specifically religious function of visual art began to disappear, visual art (specifically painting) became more or less the handmaiden of rich and powerful. In terms of its necessary social investment, painting is very expensive; it takes a long time to train a painter and most paintings are very labour intensive. This relative social expense made "fine" art the domain of only the few who could afford the investment. With the growth of the middle-class, the possible audience for 'fine' art expanded somewhat and many painters turned to decorative art (landscapes in particular) as a possible outlet for an artistic career.* But as Romantic ideology became ingrained in the culture of art, and art became more and more a question of personal expression, the function of painting became increasingly problematic. This dilemma is characterized by the fact that we have had generations of 'fine' artists who have overwhelmingly operated in isolation and anonymity. The reason for this dilemma goes back to the issue with which I began this discussion - didacticism. I think it is relatively straightforward for novels, films, theatre, or even video games to serve multiple functions. Such art forms can easily be personal expressions of their authors, entertainments, cultural documents, and morally instructive all at the same time. However, this multi-functional effort seems to be a much more difficult project for a painting. In other words, though visual art in the so-called commercial field is remarkably dynamic in its possible functions, an art form like painting is quite limited in scope compared to other art forms.
Now this a significantly truncated argument and one could write a large book fleshing out the issues raised here such as the relationship between the rise of Romanticism and capitalism, the so-called "free-market" and the emphasis on individual creativity, etc. But I think the core of the argument is fairly basic - an art form like painting, with its inherent narrative limits and its stress on the individual creative process has a difficult time thriving in a modern, technologically driven culture and market, particularly given the versatility of other art forms which can be at once didactic (or perhaps we should say 'informative'), technologically engaging, entertaining, seductively decorative, and simultaneously universal as well as personal.
I have my own, deeply personal, reasons for painting, and I don't kid myself that in an age of video games, block-buster movies, and e-readers, that painting could ever wield the kind of cultural currency that it once had. Of course, with the right recipe of luck and salesmanship, one could still earn a good living painting pictures. But like many time consuming crafts, painting is increasingly a marginalized activity. I suspect that in a world dominated by impersonal mass-production, some people will come to cherish the few things that can still have that human touch. But that will never really take art forms like painting out of the shadows of the global marketplace. As an advocate of the arts and crafts movement, I am certain that Ruskin would be horrified by the modern culture of mass-production. He wanted art to be not only a personal expression but an expression that lifted peoples lives and consciousness onto a higher plane, not only to demonstrate what we are but to demonstrate what we might become.
It is interesting that we spend thousands of dollars on objects in our lives (such as cars, computers, and cell phones) that are more or less disposable. And yet very few people go out and purchase art which is usually something that can last your own lifetime as well as the lifetimes of many of your decedents. Similarly, it is amazing that people still routinely buy paperback books that are often destroyed after one reading while the internet now gives us access to countless high-quality, well bound, hard-cover books for very reasonable prices. I suspect that the reasons for this phenomenon is fairly straightforward; in a milieu of the speed and movement that comes with computer technology, we have begun to see the function of the arts as basically disposable like everything else. Films of remarkable quality come and go over a weekend. Books appear on our e-readers and then disappear. We are served a gluttonous diet of millions of visual images everyday that are like ghost in a digital dimension. When we have lost the aura that is associated with objects of art or craft, we have also largely lost our desires to preserve objects such as paintings and the lifetimes of pleasure that they can bring.
*It is interesting that one of the primary reactions to the functional dilemma of 'fine' art was the arts and crafts movements (led in large part by William Morris) which sought to deal with the declining importance of painting that came with capitalism and secularization by bringing painting back to a craft base.
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