In this section, I present three approaches to the issue of what art is for. Each has particular implications for the ways in which art should be taught in a multicultural society, and each provides opportunities for finding some unity in diversity. All three approaches promote a view of art as a powerful, pervasive force that helps to shape our attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviors. These commissioned portraits reflect the social status of two important women. Art and social status is a theme that can be explored across cultures in art forms as diverse as architecture, body decoration and jewelry, clothing, headdresses and hats, and memorial sculpture.
Art reflects or echoes , in some way, the natural world of which it is part.
Art can also allow direct unselfconscious experience . Art helps to give order to the world. Although it contributes to order, Dissanayake also calls attention to the dishabituation function of art, that is, the fact that we may respond to art in unusual, nonhabitual ways. Art provides a sense of meaning of significance or intensity to human life that cannot be gained in any other way. Art objectifies , in that it is used to make subjective values, emotions, ideas, beliefs, and superstitions more sensuously tangible, so that they can be seen and felt.