Art is a subjective and subliminal subject. One person’s appreciation of a piece of art can and often does differ widely from that of other people, but as human beings capable of rational thought and reason, it is our prerogative to interpret and assign the value of what we behold. Even though our standards may be covered with biases formed in our minds or hearts long ago, still there is room for such emotional preference when it comes to viewing art. This is because art at its most primal level inspires the expression of emotions and thoughts in a way that spoken language cannot. Art says many things, and nothing at all. Art is jealous and magnanimous simultaneously.
Have you ever considered what art might have to say about you if the tables were turned? Would the Mona Lisa painting be moved by the expression on your face and debate with the water lilies of Monet as to what gender you might actually be? Who can say? And yet, we are curious dreamers who reside in our own dreams. We are either artists, or are the art. The other thing we can do is merely appreciate the art of others. Some of the easiest art we learn to appreciate first is that made by children; as children ourselves, when other children were our contemporaries and we were beginning to form opinions as to what looked right and what didn’t, the art of other children helped (whether we realized it or not at the time) to formulate our schema for our own creativity and its fruits. It also emboldened us with a standard, however primitive, for judging the artistic expressions of others.
Art need not be a terribly serious concept. It can ignite feelings of introspection as we attempt to reconcile the implications of its appearance or obvious social statements with our own state of being, but that doesn’t have to mean that everything is all scowls and academia. In fact, many works of art that I have seen lately have been less about academia and more about macadamia! That’s okay, though, because artists are known to be a little nutty. So are the people who buy and sell art, and who bid for it at the auctions by Sotheby’s, and who venture to display it in their homes. It isn’t good enough to simply own a piece of art; you must know what it is saying about you and who that is being said to.
