Would
a career as an art gallery owner appeal to you? What makes art so valuable
(in a monetary sense or in other ways)?
Do you agree with the author in terms of the two different types of
prophetic message that art conveys?
Which type is more important for you?
Art is a medium that has been present for centuries. If you ask 100 different people what art is for them, you will get 100 different answers. Art is something that cannot be defined in one specific way because of its subjectiveness. Some people view it as a way to express feelings and emotions, others as a medium to communicate, express political opinions, and change the current society.
ReplyDeleteI think that the author of the article has done a great job in specifying the two groups art can be divided into. Some artists do art specifically for expressing their personal emotions, like love or relationships, and the idea of putting them into an artistic masterpiece, helps release them. On the other hand, there are artists who fight for their rights, want to make a change in the society, fight the government, or want to influence moral principles. In a way, this group uses art for expressing emotions as well, but in a different, bigger spectrum. Those emotions aren’t purely personal, they involve a bigger community with the same opinions.
I wouldn’t say one of these two aspects is correct and the other one isn’t. Thanks to art’s subjectiveness and abstractness, its rules aren’t set, and artists can use the medium for any purpose. Art in general, not only visual, is based on expressing feelings, and in my opinion both above mentioned groups of artists express them, only in a different way.
Laura,
DeleteI agree completely with what you said about the subjectiveness of art - "If you ask 100 different people, you'll get 100 different answers". That's the great thing about (all forms of) art. People can use it to express whatever they want, and there shouldn't be restrictions regarding what is considered "correct" art and what isn't. Art is an almost exclusively human thing - a product of this bizzare neural circuit we call the human brain. It's not strictly defined by rules. One simply cannot make a machine that can generate completely original works of art because we don't really understand how art works and why it exists on the most basic level. This is why it should be left alone and allowed to take any form that the author considers appropriate.
I believe that everyone has encountered (or is just about to encounter) pieces of art which together convey both prophetic messages (-as defined by the article), and are of such value to the concerned individual, that no room for discussion as to which type of art is more important to oneself is left. I dare to argue that both types of art are equally important, it is simply one's tendency to like (or, possibly, prefer) one more than the other. And, in my point of view, having made the weighing of both types against each other obsolete, there is still, unfortunately, this very particular tendency, that inability (or even unwillingness) to relate to a certain kind of art results in condemnation of it. And this is so very illogical, considering Laura's point - art is subjective.
ReplyDeleteNot only is art subjective, it'd better be so. From my own experience, I can tell that the authenticity of art is one of the most important and sought after aspects of it. This comes as a logical consequence of the fact that art reflects the author's viewpoints (let 'viewpoints' comprise also feelings), which we try to discover in it, and, usually, when ours are similar, we tend to like it. I, for example, like to listen to the solos from different musicians over the same jazz standard to hear what THEY have to 'say' about it. At the same time, I know many people who cannot even relate to this music genre. In any case, the most important is that as long as it does not hurt anyone or anything (besides their ears), they accept it.
This is a comment from Anna:
ReplyDeleteArt is one of the oldest expressions of emotions and opinions in human history. Throughout time, it changed its forms many times, and even nowadays, the development of new styles is no rarity.
As the article states: "The act of making art, even in our very sophisticated present day, is an act of prophecy, and the artwork is a tool of the prophet." In modern art, artists often try to point out what they think is wrong with the current society by extraordinary and often even bizarre techniques, which is still considered to be dishonoring and not being properly understood. Most of the people, when they think of art, imagine, as mentioned in the article, Da Vinci or Picasso. There is not anything wrong about that, everyone's taste in art is different, but in the era that we live in, I would expect people to be more progressive. It strikes me that there are certain stereotypes in the art industry as well, in the area where artists should be completely free to express anything in any way they choose. People often forget that art is not just famous paintings of the 19th century, it is also, as hard as it might be for them to accept, the hideous and vulgar contemporary artworks exhibited in the nearest art gallery. My point is, art is not just about being beautiful and visually appealing. It is the sense that it makes to us that we remember in the end, and that is what should be taken into account more.
As someone coming from an artistic family, I can only say that I cannot imagine my life without art. My way to view art is through a lens of ignorance. I prefer to know nothing about the culture or the artist himself. I like forming a relationship with the colors and lines- not with any context that’s external to what’s on the canvas.