The Reason Art Exists

I came across a post shared on Twitter about the work of Karen Apps (karenapps.com) which attempts to quantify the number of child refugees known to be unaccompanied and missing in Europe. The post was captioned 'the reason art exists' which reminded me about my AS studies of Philosophy and a module I learnt about which investigated our primitive need and reasoning as human beings for art, cinema and literature.

instagram @artistkarenapps

You can view the post here:
https://twitter.com/HJJJohnson/status/810139305666547712

Fundamentally and intrinsically, we are said to value art because it "informs us of reality" in a factual, moral or spiritual way. This prompted me to think about the way that fashion as an art form can present us with different ideas about the world around us, making us question our attitudes towards things and how this simple fact makes fashion significantly important to the world around us.

Earlier this week, I saw a television news report about a recent study which may have discovered a connection between dementia and art. The study was carried out by psychologist Alex Forsythe and compared "more than two thousand works by seven famous artists", finding tiny changes in those patterns. The brushstrokes and fractal patterns of artists known or suspected to suffer with neurological diseases changed throughout their lifetime.

As a result, this lead me to consider the significance of fashion in our lives as an intrinsic value. Last year during my History and Contemporary Context module, I explored the idea of luxury fashion. If clothes are a necessity, 'fashion' could be considered a luxury. Fundamentally however, I would consider the foundations of fashion to be about art and artistic expression. The word 'art' can be defined as "the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form", which on a basic level, certainly characterises the notion of fashion.

• Baggini, J. & Southwell, G. (2002). Philosophy: Key Themes. UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Hughes, D. (2016, December 29). Art may reveal early signs of dementia. BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-38414104.
• Oxford English Dictionary https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/art