Exorcising emotions and
evoking pleasurable responses n

Art also possesses the potential to contribute to the release of tensions and the resolution of conflicts. For the artist, creating art is a vehicle for making inner thoughts and feelings visible and, therefore, more objective, which can have a cathartic, tension releasing payoff. What may have been repressed can be expressed through socially approved channels. This is the basic rationale for art therapy: through participation in art activity, what has been suppressed can be given form and, thereby, exorcised.

For the consumer of art, perceiving the organization of sensuous qualities in works of art can evoke feelings of excitement, pleasure, and a sense of equilibrium and euphoria (the principal reasons for purchasing art and/or visiting art museums and galleries). Works of art often involve us in those peak experiences that differ so markedly from the outcomes of routine encounters. These types of experiences are so satisfying that many of us are willing to make significant expenditures in time, effort, and money to be enriched by art.

Another way of knowing

Making and/or experiencing art involves reacting imaginatively and idiosyncratically to symbols and implied metaphors. Moving from general experience to the creation of a particular work that expresses and distills individual responses is the way of art. For example, observing the almost religious fervor that late 20th- century industrial societies engage in consumerism and are infatuated with the popular culture and then creating an appropriate icon: a painting of a soup can that assumes the importance of a traditional portrait.

The Guro funerary mask, with its symmetrical form and subtle but definite protrusions and depressions, conveys a sense of formal and quiet elegance. Facial features are present but are rendered as simple shapes. The eyes appear almost closed, as if in a state of repose. These qualities suggest that such a mask was utilized in a ceremony concerned with illness or death. Anthropolgists who have worked among the Guro verify the assumption that such masks were used in magical practices at funerals for members of secret societies. Members of Guro society believed that emotions were expressed solely by the mouth; the pout conveys sadness. When one considers the formal and contextual qualities of this work - its emphatic symmetry that so elegantly symbolizes feelings of reflective sadness which often accompany death -- the value of this mask as a significant work of art emerges.

Conclusions

Science seeks consensus by utilizing logical and discursive approaches to whatever phenomena are being studied. Science moves from very careful investigations of specific phenomena to generalizations, laws and principles. The goal for science is to arrive at the "truth" about whatever is being investigated: the age of an artifact, the molecular structure of a cell, the beliefs of a population. The goal for art is to focus on the meanings and/or feelings implied in the created object or event: what it means or feels like to be mournful, old, aristocratic, cruel, demonic, angelic, heroic, wealthy, poor, oppressed, sensual, chaste, exhilarated, tranquil, or a poor peasant who must shoulder an enormous burden to bring light hearted pleasure to others.