The Art Within

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     I have spent a lot of time during these last three and a half months trying to figure out what art is. Understanding the essence and the meaning of the word seemed to be an obvious and essential component for writing about it. I mean, you wouldn’t want someone who doesn’t even know the names of the human organs to perform surgery on you, would you? Of course, not. That would be completely and ridiculously absurd! Similarly, I believe that a person who doesn’t even know what “art” means has no business writing about it, or telling others how to write about it. And so, I tried to figure out what art means for the last three and a half months.

     I feel like I must pause on this introspective narration and clarify something here. When I say that I have spent literal months trying to figure out what is art, I mean to say what art means to mein particular, and not what it means in a literal dictionary sort of way. Because, you see dear reader[1], “art” has always led a dual existence in my mind. On one hand, there was the idea of the traditional art. This type of art had always been an abstract concept for me. I always thought of traditional art as something a British aristocrat from a Jane Austen novel would enjoy and be thoroughly pretentious about. You know, art like the paintings of Da Vinci and Renoir, and the concerto and symphonies of Bach and Mozart. I could never imagine normal ordinary people enjoying it because I did not know any normal ordinary people who enjoyed it. I associated traditional art with long pristine white marble corridors and hushed silences. It embodied the very height of sophistication that a 10-year-old me fresh on the heels of her first reading of Pride & Prejudice hoped to achieve in life. Understanding and appreciating this traditional art somehow became a goal for me, synonymous with “making it”.

     Then, on the other hand, there was the art that I never really thought of as art. This category comprised of literature, films, television shows, and all forms of modern commercial art. I never really thought of these things as art not because I did not consider the people who created this art as lacking in talent or creativity, but because they were so approachable and accessible to me. Art that I knew like the back of my hand, and are that I took for granted just as much. For a long time, I believed that true art was the traditional art of my mind.

     Even after I exposed myself to traditional art and started adopting the intellectual hobbies of an Austen nobleman, it did not occur to me to combine these two categories of art in my mind. They still remained in separate boxes, neatly labelled as “art” and “things I enjoyed consuming” in the corners of my mind. The distance between these two concepts was as long as it had always been. And then this semester started, and I decided to try and define “art” for myself. I finally merged these two concepts and I have since come to realise that art is nothing more than the physical manifestation of ideas. The artist tries to make art as aesthetically pleasing as possible because it has the capacity to invoke the maximum amount of emotion in the audience member. People feel things when they experience art. Sometimes it is just a memorable emotional reaction, and sometimes it is a life-changing experience. Sometimes the ideas of the art are as clear as the view from a transparent window on a sunny day, and sometimes these ideas evade even the most skilful detectives. Every experience with art is unique and isolated amongst itself.

     Art is merely the physical manifestation of ideas. And so, in order to write meaningfully about it, the art critic must learn to recognise and experience these ideas. Now, I admit that I am not a seasoned art critic with years of experience that would qualify me to dole out guidelines and advice on the essentials of meaningful ekphrasis. I am a novice art critic, at best. Therefore, dear reader, do not treat this document as a manifesto on the art of ekphrasis. This document is simply a condensed list of realisations that I came to from actually writing about a few forms of art. It is merely a public diary in that way.

     Over the course of these last three and a half months or so, I have realised that the key really is in the details. This phrase is not just something you tell yourself over and over again whilst trying to solve a particularly difficult spot-the-differences game. I had the privilege of analysing Jackson Pollock’s beautiful piece Convergence when I stumbled upon this particular nugget of realisation. I was staring at the cacophony of seemingly random brush strokes for what felt like days – but was indeed just a few measly hours – when I started to spot faces in the black paint. My initial reaction was to announce to all my near and dear friends that I had officially lost my mind and started hallucinating. I felt like I finally understood what those people who see Elvis’ face in potato crisps feel like. But when I continued to spot those same faces even after a long break from the painting, I realised that there was more to the painting than I initially thought. Pollock put those figures in his piece for a reason and I felt like I was finally doing his work justice in my mind by focusing on those details. Another thing I realised from analysing the Pollock piece and Harvey Breverman’s Discontinuous Sequence Series: Tannenberg was the importance of history. The gravity of those pieces and the ideas that inspired their creation would have been lost on me if I did not research their historical background – the Cold War. I realised that understanding history helps in understanding the present.

     Art is everywhere. I do not mean this in a philosophical find-the-beauty-around-you way. I mean it quite literally. In this day and age, we are constantly bombarded with more information than our brains can process. And that is why, I have realised that it is important for the art critic to figure out what they like. Art is meant to bring the viewer joy. So why would you subject yourself to something that you know you dislike? But recent events have made me come to the realisation that it is just as important to be open-minded. Art has the ability to sometimes surprise you. I realised this when I went to a performance of The Hunchback of Notre Dame last October. Now, one thing I want you to know is that I absolutely do not like musicals. I can sit through some Disney films and I adore the Mamma Mia! films – it is ABBA songs with some of my favourite actors, what’s not to adore? – but that is about it. I do not particularly like it when characters start communicating via songs, but I did not have any other plans and so I decided to go to the show. And I am honestly so very glad that I did. It was truly an unforgettable experience for me. It doesn’t mean that I suddenly like all musicals now, but I have come to appreciate the experience of seeing on live. It was positively electric.

     Literature has always been my first realised love. It has been my go-to answer to “what do you like to do in your free time?” since about third grade. And it has taught me great many things over the course of my life. But ever since I started analysing literature as an art form, it has taught me even more. I have learnt to recognise and appreciate the power of the actual words on the page. I realised that the form of art makes you fall in love with it, but its content sustains that love. You cherish the idea behind a sentence precisely because of the words used to convey it. When you read Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, you fall in love with his descriptions before you fall in love with his ideas. Edgar Allan Poe draws you in and makes you stay with the narrator of The Man of the Crowd in a similar way. Your reception to these particular words of the authors is governed by your history. We all respond differently to different authors because of their choice of words. I have realised that your experience of a work of art is influenced by the previous art that you have consumed.

     Writing about the arts is an incredibly difficult task. As an art critic, you must not be afraid to get personal and get to the heart of the piece without losing sight of what’s in front of your eyes[2]. You must always remember to embrace the experience of the art itself and let it work its magic on your emotions. Only then will you be able to internalise the artwork and find the art within yourself to meaningfully criticise the artwork.

 

 

[1]When writing this piece, I was inspired by Joan Didion’s Goodbye to All That. The essay taught me to get personal with my readers and provide them an insight into my thought process.

[2]Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation helped me break out of my academic way of thinking and writing and appreciate the beauty of the artwork itself. She made me realise that while interpretation and appreciation go hand-in-hand while writing about the arts, appreciation should always be prioritised.