What is art? It is easy, and perhaps true, to say that the answer varies depending on who you ask, that it is in the eye of the beholder. Yet I believe that there are certain constants that draw groups of people to agree on what art is. These attributes could be a certain aesthetic ideal, an appreciation for technical skill, a shared emotion, or shared belief--what matters the most is that they provoke a memorable experience for the audience. This experience may be purely sensory, starkly emotional, or deeply intellectual, or a great combination of all of these reactions. The result is that art is not merely an object or an unresponsive product, it is constantly recreated by its audience upon each fresh viewing. The same piece of artwork is reincarnated differently in the minds of the viewers but it invariably is an experience of a created universe, condensed to a single impression. Creating art means wielding the ultimate power, the ability to haunt and provoke and force someone to look twice.
No comments:
Post a Comment