What does the artistic experience mean to you, or for you?
Wow! What a question! Maybe because it is so vague. What is Art? Why do we make Art? Do we feel Art? See Art? Smell it? Taste it? Hear it? Why? Who can do it? … and quite a lot more. It’s a damn good question. That’s why the response has been so vast and varied. I saw it by chance and if I don’t answer now, I won’t sleep tonight. My thoughts, which recapitulate many of your responses, may be taken with a pinch of salt (no offence meant!) But please bear with me. Starting at the last in the above list:
Who can do Art? Anybody. Everybody. Artists. One day, one of my stories that I post on the forum may be a great work of art. A one off! But I’m not an Artist. Seventy-odd years ago I decided I wanted to be an artist and went to an Art School. I was doing quite well but one day I had an experience that shewed me I would never be able to sustain the type of vitality necessary to be one. I described this experience in a story I posted in the old Forum. We are all potential one-offers. Artists are made up differently. You can’t learn to be an Artist. You can learn a craft. The better you learn the craft, the nearer you get to making art.
Why do we make Art? Artists, because they can’t do anything else. They`re made that way. The really good ones are often self-centered narcissists, antisocial with no empathy or sympathy and often extremely lonely even if they are in the performing arts.
We, the potential one-offers, are lonely, too. It’s a characteristic of our gregarious species. People are alone even in a crowd, an office, a family or marriage. It’s in the nature of the individual. It hurts and we try to solve it by reaching out to others. In the small town where I live, walkers by say to each other ‘Good Day, to you.’ even though we have never seen each other before and do not expect to again. You might argue this is just a question of manners or acknowledgement we exist. One day when I was leaving my building, a woman leaving hers on the other side of the busy street waived to me. I had never seen her before. I was feeling particularly lonely that day and she made the sun come out for me. Now be honest. Why do you contribute to this forum? You may say it’s for the critiques of your work. Maybe, but deep down you are reaching out to other people, hopefully like you. Via your stories. More than just “Good Day to you” your story is saying “This is me. I’ve got something to tell you”. This is the germ of Art.
What is Art? Good question. Rather than a PREscription, I favour a DEScription. Rather than “I’ve got something to tell you,” it is “I’ve got something for you to feel through what I tell you.” The essence of Art is to transmit feelings, emotions, rather than facts and may affect any of our senses, even taste – remember the scene in Ratatouille where the critic sees the vision of his mother when he eats the vegetable stew? This is probably why good Artists are so difficult. The effort required to conjure up and transmit over time feelings they do not experience first hand themselves must be huge.
The advantage of a descriptive answer like this is that it is ample enough to encompass most Art, even, for example, the gruesome paintings uploaded in the responses since the feelings generated may be related to morality, ideology, what have you. And also it permits the appreciation of one-off Art on an equal footing to that of Artist produced Art.
The disadvantage is that it includes the receptor of the reaching-out communication. My daughter is thoroughly bored while tears stream down my cheeks watching the interpretation of a piece of baroque music on the telly. Neither she nor I claim our tastes represent real Art at the expense of the other’s.
Last of all, in reality I’m reaching out to you …. I feel I have something to say. Maybe, though, you’ve heard it all before. In any case it isn’t Art!
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