The necessity of art

"Poetry is a necessity.. and oh, if only I knew why" — with this gentle phrase, Jean Cocteau expressed the necessity of art and at the same time conveyed the confusion regarding the role of art in the contemporary bourgeois world. But here, there is another opinion, expressed by the photographer Mondrian, who believes that art can disappear and that reality will gradually replace art, as long as art is essentially just a compensation for the imbalance in the current reality. He said, "Art will disappear when life reaches a higher degree of balance," and in this view, he sees art as an alternative to life. However, we must ask: Is art merely an alternative to life? Does it not also express a deeper relationship between humans and the world? Or can the function of art be summarized in one phrase at all? Doesn't art satisfy a wide and diverse range of human needs? And even if we could define the primary function of art by studying its origins, can we say that this function has not changed with societal changes? Have new functions not emerged for art? This book is an attempt to answer these questions and similar ones. It is based on the belief that art has been a necessity, still is, and will forever remain a necessity.