When you take in fine art you may feel the greatness of life itself, a raised consciousness, an inner experience. No? Well, then you must work harder – keep it up and it will come to you too.
We are all interested in art – there are many reasons: buy it and sell it for a profit, take it into your home for decorative purposes, to your workplace to set the style, go to a gallery to see and get an intellectual stimulation, make you happy, make you think, engage deep feeling, arouse curiosity, feel disgust, make you ashamed, make you proud, sense beauty, make a living from it …..
Art can obviously be good for us: make us more alert, stimulate our thinking, relieve boredom.
What is “quality art” is the cause of most often endless but sometimes conclusive debate – there surely must be quality art out there. It may be hard to find the level of quality, but maybe you know it when you see it? Recognition of artists vary widely – some are not recognized when they are new, but often this gradually changes. Most important artists are men, or the galleries – and the customers – prefer them, and the reasons for this are obscure.
To day many things are called art – there are no limits to the number of labels that are used any more: figurative, abstract, non-figurative, elitist, kitsch, primitive, indigenous, …..
Sculpture can be bold, solid, fluid, fragile – with all sorts of connections and comparisons. Words like simple, stylised, decorative can be used.
Influences are of all sorts: Native American, African, Indian, urban, Aboriginal and schools of many kinds abound.
Art can be bold, opulent, enigmatic, atmospheric, energetic, ugly, harmonious, enticing, it can show movement or be static, be entertaining, valuable.
There are markets with supply and demand, critics, knowledgeable people, impostors, thieves, sponsors, active buyers or collectors, galleries – the activity is huge and nobody can follow it all – you must choose or get lost.
The media used are limitless: paint, video, stone, rubbish, sound, pictures, mixes of these.
Many artists have been found to been obnoxious in the past – they have broken the norms – but broken norms can push us forward.
Your own thinking about art will develop when you take part: see, read, listen, go there. Never lose faith – art is a very big and wide concept – too big to grasp fully. Developments are there all the time – try and get some of it.
At the bottom of it all – or is it the top – is the wish we have to see and try to understand larger forces, reveal deeper truths, become more active, increase consciousness and come closer to our own I. It is also about the fusion of intellect and emotion, engaging only one at a time will not do. And don’t leave out the fun.
Have you had a look at Australian Aboriginal Art ?
Have you seen what Google is up to? Google Art Project
