/lit/ - Literature

>>20584414
When I read Coomaraswamy some years ago this part struck out:
>...it is sufficiently evident that from a Christian point of view, the work of art is always a means, and never an end in itself. Being a means, it is ordered to a given end, without which it has no raison d'etre, and can only be treated as bric-a-brac. The current approach may be compared to that of a traveller who, when he finds a signpost, proceeds to admire its elegance, to ask who made it, and finally cuts it down and decides to use it as a mantelpiece ornament.

It's not that the process of making art isn't pleasurable but it still tends to leave me with the feeling that I've fallen short (of getting to that unknown thing). To draw for those reasons that I used to set before myself feels cheap, but to draw for no purpose at all, except for the end in itself, feels hollow. You mentioned playing music and reciting poetry; those practices don't engender the same longing because, for those like me who aren't composers or poets, they're disconnected from the act of creation