“I just want to make something look good.”
This statement was made by a young woman in my ART 111 class today. What shocked me was how simple this sentence seemed to be. Art should be that simple because it dates back to the core of the universe. In our reading from “Conversations Before the End of Time” by Suzi Gablik our class learned about the purpose of art and the origins of art. The author writes her book through conversations with other artists. In the section we read, the author talked to Ellen Dissanayake. Ellen Dissanayake is an author and describes her theory of the purpose of art as “making special.” Making special is an incredibly delicate way of describing what art is. Honestly, I believe it’s a quite beautiful way of describing it. Making could be an adjective of craft. Our class defined craft as something someone creates for a function. I believe this is true, but doesn’t everything you create ultimately have a destiny? Isn’t there going to be a means for every object that is made? I don’t know about you, but when I make something, I know that when I’m done with it, there is going to be a purpose for it. When you make something special, you want there to be a purpose for it. It is imbedded in human nature to want to share their creations with society. Without sharing creations, there would be no community.
“There is a great deal of confusion currently about where art fits into society, and what function it should serve. In the modern era, art’s role was to challenge and disrupt by means of its ‘otherness’ and inaccessibility. Today the question of ‘community’ is much debated―not only ‘what’ art is for, but ‘who’ art is for. Eleanor Heartney summarized the turmoil in an essay called ‘Quality Control’ in the New Art Examiner recently: ‘Do we want art that is harmonizing or disruptive? Should it build bridges or shake us up? Should it express a community or an individual vision? Does art suffer when it is instilled with an agenda? Does it lose something when it begins to approximate the models of social work and therapy?’”
-from “Conversations” page 39.
I believe that art is for everyone. To me, this seems like an obvious answer. I guess to society, it doesn’t seem so easy to answer. Art is for everyone because that is its purpose. This is where the role of the viewer becomes extremely important. The role of the viewer is the purpose of response. Art needs to be responded to, that is why it’s created. As for the other questions, we want art of all kinds. This is so because otherwise our world would be deprived of diversity. The more diverse the community, the better the history and culture; this was why America was such a glorious destination.
As for the response of art, it is important because when something is created, there needs to be a viewer to evaluate its purpose. The viewer decides what might be missing.
“Something is missing there. Something rogue. Something else you have to figure in before you can figure it out.”
-Toni Morrison, Jazz
This quote was one of the many that our professor presented us with. As this quote struck our professor, it seemed to pose an interesting mystery to me, as well. This quote makes me believe that art is meant to be deciphered. It doesn’t matter how that art is conveyed, it is always meant to be deciphered and discovered. It is a behavior.
“But when you view art as a ‘behavior’ of making important things special, it seems quite evident that this is universal, even though every culture may not paint or sculpt or make installations.”
-from “ Conversations” page 43
Art is meant to be accomplished. Take our professor for example; her art has become a series of actions. It is incredibly passionate and creative and exactly what art should be defined as. She is becoming more a performance artist and has brought me to believe in the action as art. Art can be in all aspects of life and shouldn’t be so elitist. It is for everyone and definitely can emerge from any kind of behavior. Art is completely universal and something that is necessary to life. Every person wants to make something that looks good. I honestly believe that no person wants to look bad. It doesn’t matter what their definition of bad is, nobody wants to look it. Everyone strives to create themselves every single day. Everything you do has a purpose and will ultimately complete a destiny. Every action you make and word you say is a part of who you are. This is why I believe that all aspects of life, no matter what aspects life may entail, are beautiful. Life is art to me, and everything in it with respect to its intention, is art. I say intention because art is all about one’s intention. You have to believe in it to create it, no matter how one is creating it.
