Thoughts on Art in the Present Day
I haven’t really done a lot of my own artwork very much, sadly it’s because I have no motivation to do so, and also because I think I’m addicted to using the computer.
However, I was looking at some images on deviantART and saw some images that to me, don’t look like art. It seems as the word itself is used so casually and loosly, it’s hard it seems for anyone to say what really is art, when really it seems anything can be considered art.
At TAFE I often heard people say things like, “that as long as you like it, and as long as it has meaning behind it, it’s art,” and sentences along the lines of that. I don’t believe that is true. Just because you put two chemicals together into a beaker to see whether an explosion will occurr doesn’t make you a scientist. I see photographs taken of something and yes the person may have thought about it, and it meant something to them, so what? It looks like an ordinary photograph that anyone can take without thought or question, and that I believe defeats the purpose of what art is. Art is meant to make you stop, think, question and challenge you (whether it be morally, ethically, spiritually, mentally etc), not just so you can go, “never seen that before.” People who don’t study art themselves, and who do not understand art often think that art is anything, and they can call whatever they want, art. However I know different now from going to my art theory and history lessons.
For example, you might question why someone bothered to put a pink box in the middle of a street, that is the size of a car. How is that art you might ask? It’s art because in a street where you see nothing but cars, buildings, tar roads, traffic lights and machinery, and to see a pink box, you stop and look. It visually captures you. I mean of course it would fucking visually capture you, it’s a fucking pink box in the middle of the road. That’s just it though, that kind of art focuses on the elements and principles of art. It’s focus is colour and shape, that was the artist’s intention.
Just because you see something nice in the street and want to take a photo of it, doesn’t make it art. It has to be more than that. I think art has become so “normal” nowadays and people just abuse it, and do whatever they want with it.
Although down in history and in ancient times people were strict and artists were men rather than women, at least there art had its name. Now, it’s hard for people to appreciate it, for what it REALLY is.
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