There are two really bad ideas that are hovering in the modern world that inhibit our capacity to draw strength from art.

The first idea is that art should be for art's sake. A ridiculous idea.
The idea that art should live in a hermetic bubble and should not try and DO anything with this troubled world. I couldn't disagree more.
The other thing that we believe is that art shouldn't explain itself, that artists shouldn't say what they're up to, because saying it might destroy the spell - we might find it too easy. That's why, a very common feeling when you're in a museum or art gallery (let's admit it) is - 'I don't know what this is about' but if we're 'serious' people we don't admit to that. That feeling of puzzlement is structural to contemporary art.

Religions have a much saner attitude to art. They have no trouble telling us what art is about. Art is about two things in all the major faiths. Firstly it's trying to remind you of what there is to love, and secondly it's trying to remind you of what there is to fear and to hate. And that's what art is. Art is a visceral encounter with the most important ideas of your faith. So as you walk around a church or a mosque, what you're imbibing through your senses are truths that would otherwise come to you through your mind. Essentially it's propaganda. Rembrandt is a propagandist in the Christian view. Now the word propaganda sets off alarm bells - we think of Hitler, Stalin - don't, necessarily. Propaganda is a manner of being didactic in honor of something, if that thing is good there's no problem with it at all. My view is that museums (and art galleries) should take a leaf out of the book of religions. If I was a curator I would make a room for love, a room for generosity, etc. All works of art are talking to us about things, and if we were able to arrange spaces where we could come across works, we would be told 'use these works of art to cement these ideas in your mind' we would get a lot more out of art. Art would pick up the duty that it used to have and that we've neglected because of certain misfounded ideas. Art should be one of the tools by which we improve our society, art should be didactic.

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