A good example here is the magician.
He is an entertainer and his goal is by definition self-explanatory… to entertain with the use of magic. What he does takes tremendous skills, an abundance in talent and dedication to his work. By being an entertainer, does he care if the members of his audience become more informed and more knowledgeable individuals after his show? No… Actually, the less they know about what they have just seen, the greater the entertainment. Does the entertainer concern himself with the enrichment of his audience’s spiritual state? And by saying “spiritual”, I do not mean the religious interpretation of the term. A person enhances his “spirit” by acquiring information, knowledge, ideas, perceptions and a greater understanding on a subject which he did not possess before becoming exposed to the source of that information. So can a magician enrich his audience’s spirit? Yes… he can. Is it mandatory though because he is an entertainer? No… it’s not.
I believe this is the core difference between an artist and an entertainer. When art is created simply to serve its self and satisfy the tastes of individuals by providing them with a short, joyful experience, without elevating their knowledge-base or introducing a new perspective or understanding on the issue it concerns its self… then the artist seizes to be an artist and transforms into an entertainer. That is the point when art becomes a product, and its core function is no longer to contribute, to expand, to enrich or to elevate its field… but to be consumed. A short-term action which stimulates the brain in a passive way, creating a positive emotional reaction, which as pleasant as it may be, once its influence passes by, leaves you in no greater spiritual state than you were in before. Another product which serves the exact same function is of course, the use of drugs.
Creating beauty in art is beautiful…
Creating art because you need to see beauty is beautiphol.
In literature and the film industry, the entertainment mechanisms have overshadowed the artistic mechanisms and the market is overloaded with works of either very slim spiritual contribution, or very often not any at all. I have recently read a book in the Sci-Fi genre which had an interesting plot (I do not enjoy hammering down other authors or their work, so I will not mention the title) and I was astonished by how little difference it made to my “spirit” once I finished reading it. It literally gave me nothing that I could possibly keep. There was a formula there; With a fixed plot, fixed characters, a fixed environment for the plot and the characters to work in, and their aim was simple… to provide a fix. Did I enjoy it? Yes, it was an entertaining book, extremely well written and the plot kept me interested. But it failed to find a good balance between art and entertainment, leaning entirely towards the latter, I suppose due to marketing reasons. It had nothing to offer to its reader other than an instant positive emotional satisfaction which is doomed to fade away and leave back nothing unchanged. Do I consider it as a work of art? I do not. And allow me to explain why…
