“People who spend much time with art come to appreciate increasingly the affective, historical, and cultural aspects of the work they are viewing, occasionally more than they enjoy its purely visual aspects.
One professional described it: ‘Art that I personally respond to… have behind them a lot of conceptual, political, and intellectual activity…. The visual representations are really signposts to this beautiful machine that has been constructed, unique on the earth, and is not just a rehashing of visual elements, but is really a new thought machine that an artist, through visual means and combining his eyes with his perceptions, has created.’
What this person sees in a painting is not just a picture, but a ‘thought machine’ that includes the painter’s emotions, hopes, and ideas—as well as the spirit of the culture and the historical period in which he lived. With careful attention, one can discern a similar mental dimension in physically enjoyable activities like athletics, food, or sex. We might say that making a distinction between flow activities that involve functions of the body and those that involve the mind is to some extent spurious, for all physical activities must involve a mental component if they are to be enjoyable. Athletes know well that to improve performance beyond a certain point they must learn to discipline their minds. And the intrinsic rewards they get include a lot more than just physical well-being: they experience a sense of personal accomplishment, and increased feelings of self-esteem. Conversely, most mental activities also rely on the physical dimension.”
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
2087
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