According to Ellen Dissanayake’s artice “What is art for”, she mainly discussed about what is Art and what is art for. She first introduced the background of the human art history. She gave her own view of art for life’s sake, and suggest like “First, that the idea of art encompasses all of human history; second, that it include all human societies; and third, that it accounts for the fact that art is a psychological or emotional need and has psychological or emotional effects.”(p15). She briefly but precisely pointed out the relationship between art and human’s life. In my personal view, I think art’s generate is inevitable during human’s history. Because with the development of human culture and society, the art comes out automatically and naturally, people like and enjoy beautiful things in their lives, it is such human nature, life should be spent on good things. Ellen then specifically talked about the history and the development of Western art in different times. She talked about in medieval times, how did the art performed in Renaissance times, and compared art in the 18th century and modern times. To let us know much more histories and how did art developed in human’s culture, and showed us how did the art effect human’s life and society. The author also discussed the interpretation of what art actually is.

I am very impressed of what she said in this article which is “Art is not confined to a small cotcric of geniuses, visionaries, cranks, and charlatans. Art-like activities exist in all societies and all walks of life.” (26). It is true, although not every people in this world is or could be an artist, however, art is not created by artists only, we can find art everywhere during our lives. So, I personally think there has no such a definition of what art real is, although people might have some agreements of art in common, such as “The Mona Lisa Smiles.” However, every people could have their own definition of “Art” in their mind. In the other hand, art come from everywhere, art is not only from some famous artists like Vincent VanGhon, Da vinci, or Mozart, but also from the nature like Colorado Grand Canyon. And art also comes from street, even from a homeless people with a broken guitar, he played a nice song not only brought happiness to himself but also to people who walked passed by. It is also can be called “art”. This is the charm of art, and what the art really is.