“Art is meant to be pretty.”
I heard someone say this as I wandered through the mall on a saturday… or maybe it was a friday… forget it. The point is that I heard these words spoken, wiht sincerity, as I wandered through the mall on an otherwise unperturbed day. To anyone reading this who is currently wondering why this bothers me, stop reading now and go somewhere else. Or read on if you’d like to understand …. Moving on.
Art. is. not. always. Pretty.
Art is a great many things. It is visceral. It is primal. It is frightening. It is pushing the envelpoe, regardless of direction. Art is chaos swallowing order and finding order in itself. Art is the evolution of our first real methods of communication. Before they had words, people “spoke” through grunts and miming. I picture it something like a very enthusiastic game of charades after a few drinks. Our first “writing” was pictures of hunters and bison, I think.These methods of communication eventually became what we now think of as “Art”.
Has art ever stopped being about communication?
No.
I don’t think there is any art that isn’t an elaborite form of communication. I don’t think it’s possible. Everything we “Do” is a method of communication… hold on….
Sorry about that. I wanted a cigarrette.
So, right… Art and what it is, in my apropriately “humble” opinion.
Art says something. I tells us things that words alone cannot always express, except for written works. They tell us, in words, things that words alone cannot always express, Which doesn’t really seem possible, but there it is.
Art makes us look into places we otherwise ignore. Sometimes places that we fear. Sometimes things that confuse us. Sometimes it takes us to fun places. Sometimes not. But the art we like is the art that “speaks” to us. That is it’s purpose. To take us places that we need to go, and tells us things we need to understand.
Art can be pretty. Art can also be ugly, vulgar, disturbing and lewd.
At this point in our sociological evolution, art is.
That’s all. Have fun.
JK
