point of art

 ask people what the point of art is and you'll probably get a bunch of nimbly pimbly answers like

I don't know

and

art doesn't have a point

and

to affect people emotionally in some way

or 

communicate ideas through a medium

or something like that which I think is lame. The point of art that I like the best is to give you permission. Art succeeds when it gives someone else permission to make the art or do the thing they have been wanting to do.

Art is a hammer not a ravioli. That's what I'm trying to say. 

You can eat a ravioli yum yum and that's fine but that's not what art is. What do you do with a hammer?

You pick it up and drive sharpened steel into planks of lumber.

You wouldn't just look at a hammer, a mighty sledge, and go, "wow gosh em gee that sure is nice."

And I'm not trying to say that art has to be practical in any way. Regardless of practicality or purpose, art should flip some switch inside you that makes you want to do a thing you maybe didn't even know you wanted to do. Art can reveal the nails you've been meaning to pound and give you the tool to do it.

I'm also not saying it's a perfect 1 to 1 relationship. Like if you see a painting you like and now you want to make paintings like that. It can be. But it could also be a song that gives you permission to think and act a certain way. Or a sculpture whose process inspires your own process. 

The process of making something is "doing something" and so it doesn't make sense to me why the appropriate response should be "receiving". Doing begets doing.