For the Love of Art

For the Love of Art

What is art? Would music, paintings, movies, dance, and speech all be considered art? What type, style or quality is required for these to be deemed art? These are wonderful questions. Many have tried to define for themselves and others what the correct answers are. The questions are wonderful, because, I believe they have no correct answers. I find the questions enlightening because there is no right or wrong. This is freeing. If one can’t be proven right, then how can one be proven wrong?

The picture of the Virgin Mary on a ham sandwich that sold on Ebay, it that art? I don’t think the price or medium should be a factor. Van Gogh sold not one painting in his life time, yet only the wealthiest people in the world today could afford his work that has sold for millions at auction. I believe Van Gogh to be a great artist, not Hormel. Could we say art is in the eye of the beholder? A four year old that “paints” abstracts has taken the art world by storm, an elephant that paints with his trunk, a computer generated interactive music machine, ok. The eye of the beholder.

The prerequisite for art to be considered art is on the receiving side. I think it a human quality to admire or be affected by art. Like the tree that falls in the forest, is a painting art if nobody sees it? In an article written by Elaine Thornburgh and Jack Logan, they discuss the quality that all great art has, the ability to transcend time and place.

I have my own feelings about what should be considered art, and it is just that, my feeling. Art moves, inspires, disgusts, disturbs or touches us in some way. It may change us, it may not. There is one thing that would discount what I consider art. If I am indi...

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...nstruments, they all have an affect.

Music has the ability to strike chords inside our soul. I hear Chopin I am physically altered. How does that happen? How can an organization of notes affect a human being in such a way? I am waiting for the study to come out. The one that explains exactly why these emotions are driven up from classical music and other artistic forms. The one that reduces my experience to synapses. The one that explains the tone quality and particular note arrangement in relation to brain waves and reaction times. The combination of strings and horns or color and line that trigger a specific reaction. I am waiting for the scientific study so I can seek it out and make sure that I don’t read any part of it. I like being moved, inspired, disgusted, disturbed and touched by art. I love the mystery of it all.. It makes me feel alive.