According to The Macquarie Dictionary, art is defined as, " The production or expression of what is beautiful (esp. visually), appealing or of more than ordinary significance." People insist on defining art because it lets the reader know what objects or activities are being discussed, in this case it is visual arts.
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Art is important because it is just like any other language, it is a visual language, where it has its own vocabulary and modes of expression. In modern society the language of art has become a vehicle for the posing and the attempting of answering questions. Also, art expresses meanings and because it creates effects and causes results. Art is important because it is a tool that enables us to make our thoughts and feelings about the world concrete and to raise them as a topic for discussions in today's society.
All art has a purpose to the artist and the viewer. As stated by Pablo Picasso, " The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls." This quote probably means that art has a purpose to clean off the little worries of people's thoughts and emotions away. Also a quote by painter, Walker Percy states, "The purpose of art is to transmit universal truths of a sort, but of a particular sort, that in art, whether it's poetry or painting, you are telling the reader or the listener or the viewer something he already knows but which he doesn't quite know that he knows, so that in the action of communication he experiences a recognition, a feeling that he has been there before, a shock of recognition. So what the artist does, or tries to do, is simply to validate the human experience and to tell people the deep human truths, which they already unconsciously know.".
Art in its many forms, may it be painting, drama, music, poetry or sculpting, all have their forms of representation and communication. In visual art, artists use representation to represent their ideas about whatever using different types of mediums and techniques.