Not everybody likes art. Let me back up and rephrase that: not everyone’s interested in art. And that’s okay. Nobody’s interested in everything. I find all kinds of things fascinating—sometimes things I didn’t even think about will interest me, and I’ve gotten drawn into long conversations with people about their hobbies, but even I have things that just can’t hold my attention, as my college economics professor learned, but that’s another story. So not everybody’s interested in art but I think almost all people appreciate having it around. Imagine if hotel rooms, lobbies, or other spaces were just blank. It’d be pretty dull. It might even be unnerving. You might not realize what it is that’s missing, just that there’s something that’s not quite right. Or maybe hotels just hang up pictures to distract you from the bedbugs.
Anyway this is what got me thinking about that:
It also got me thinking about when I was younger and had this idea that the way to define “good” art was that it inspired some kind of emotional reaction, and let me add that this was years, maybe even a decade, before I first read Aristotle, although he limited the emotions he thought art should inspire to pity and terror, and I eventually realized that, hey, pretty much all art inspires some kind of emotion. Even if you stand in front of it and say, “Well that sucks” that’s still an emotional reaction, one that might even be strong enough to distract you from the bedbugs.
Here’s a wider view of that graffiti:
I like the words–I especially like the way the artist has used cursive and the way the artist has made a U that kind of looks like a Y, and the possibility that the artist is asking, “Why feel it?” But it’s that figure on the left that makes it something even more. Here’s a closer look:
That the figure is headless suggests mindlessness, disappearance, invisibility–but it also invites us to put ourselves in the position of the art. Instead of looking at me, it might say, put yourself in my place. What do you see? What do you feel?
I feel all of it, Chris, and I also love the word “Cope.”
Ann Koplow recently posted…Day 2463: Incredible
I love the word “Cope” too and I wish I’d addressed it as part of the graffiti there. It’s subtle but a lovely statement in itself.
Headless he may be but what’s with the toilet roll about his person?
He’s papered to the wall and gradually peeling away, so I think the toilet roll is where he’s starting to lose his edge.
I do think all art inspires emotion, even if it is just “that sucks” (but then I think it’s not such good art- because the best art to me inspires complex emotions)
You’re absolutely right: the best art does inspire complex emotions which, I think, makes Aristotle’s view that art should only inspire terror or pity a bit limited. After all any art that makes you say “that sucks” is likely to inspire terror when you see the price tag and pity for the poor chump who bought it.