The Purpose of Art
by Matt Cardin. What is deepest in you is deepest in others. Write from that.
The following article was written by Matt Cardin, the man and the mind behind the publication The Living Dark.
The Living Dark is Matt’s blog/newsletter on creativity for writers, situated at the intersection of religion, horror, nonduality, apocalypse, dystopia, consciousness, and the numinous unknown. Matt is the author of five books and the editor of four more. His books have been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, long-listed the Bram Stoker Award, and praised by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and others.
We urge you to subscribe to his insight packed newsletter for creatives by clicking the button below:
This article originally appeared here, I’m sharing it with The BoldBrush Letter because I feel it is a topic of interest to all creatives.
Editor’s Note: In two days, this post will be locked and is available only to paid members because we don’t want this duplicate content on the open web in a way that might draw traffic away from Matt’s original post. If you are not a BoldBrush paid subscriber, you can still read the entire post here.
The Purpose of Art
The purpose of art, the very definition of the word itself, revolves around the idea and act of highlighting or underscoring certain aspects of reality as perceived by the individual artist. The artist captures and clarifies a moment of vision, a moment when he or she was gripped by the recognition and passionate appreciation of some idea, emotion, insight, or perception.
Art, or the artist, invites people to focus upon some discrete aspect of the world, of reality, and in doing so, in magnifying this tight focus, it invites us to see through the surface of mundane reality and recognize the awesome mystery that lies at the heart of everything.
Art, pure art, is thus inherently subversive to any culture or society that has expended its energies on erecting a routinized, mechanized, quantified, objectified way of life, since such art reveals the elusive, fluid, infinite reservoir of incomprehensible—and thus unquantifiable and uncontrollable—mystery that lies at the heart of subjective experience and reality itself.
Art is thus inextricably related to religion, since the purpose and meaning of both is to reunite people with the Ground of Being.
The fascinating thing about art per se, as distinct from religion, is that it emphasizes by its very nature the subjective, nonmaterial nature of this reunion. Art performs its function via a change in consciousness. It is entirely about subjectivity: about perception, appreciation, attention, intellection, emotion, insight, and awareness. It inherently encourages the individual to recognize that spiritual awakening or religious transformation is a matter of experience.
It draws attention to interiority in the way that Douglas Harding seeks to do with his in-pointing exercises, and that Jesus does with his emphasis on inner righteousness over outward formalism, and that Hui Hai does with his discussion of the “inner storehouse” out of which a person can draw infinite riches, and that Brother Lawrence does with his talk of a “fund in the soul” out of which flow indescribably sweet spiritual treasures.
Art, both the creation and appreciation of it, is an exercise of clear spiritual vision.
(The above is from my private journal in June 2004. It's when I stumble across entries like this from years ago that I remember why things like J. F. Martel's 2015 masterpiece Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice or Clintavo’s ongoing outpourings of insight into the deep nature of art move me so deeply.)"
PS - Today’s post was an excerpt from Matt Cardin’s book, Journals, Volume 2: 2002–2022.
About the author: This piece was written by Matt Cardin. The Living Dark is Matt’s blog/newsletter on creativity for writers, situated at the intersection of religion, horror, nonduality, apocalypse, dystopia, consciousness, and the numinous unknown.
Matt is the author of five books and the editor of four more. He has a Ph.D. in leadership studies and an M.A. in religious studies. He spent 16 years teaching English composition and literature, first as a higher school teacher and then as a college professor. He also taught college courses in world religions. Presently Matt is a college vice president.
Matt’s books have been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, long-listed the Bram Stoker Award, and praised by Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and others.
We urge you to subscribe to his insight packed newsletter for creatives by clicking the button below:
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Yes!!
This is a rare articulation of art’s true function—one that doesn’t reduce it to therapy, performance, or social commentary. Art, when it’s not pandering to trend or profit, destabilizes the mechanized trance of the world. It confronts us with the ineffable by piercing through surface perception. That alone makes it dangerous to systems built on control. What’s compelling here is the recognition that art and awakening are not separate paths. Both dismantle the illusion of objectivity and re-anchor us in lived interiority. When art stops doing this, it becomes design. When it remembers this, it becomes divinity in motion.