A Brutish Reality

In my writing discussion yesterday we talked about art. What is art? Is the message in art important? What gives art meaning? All of these questions are weighty. Old men with beards and bald heads were arguing the facts some 2000 years ago. And now, overly pretentious pseudo-intellectual University students with patchy beards and swoop haircuts debate the same questions. Where has it gotten us in this foul year of our lord, 2010? What benefit is there to try and define the undefinable? We, as humans, attempt to put a label on everything. This is post-impressionism. That is neo-realism. We create labels to define and categorize and standardize. However, standardizing human emotion is beginning to tread in the waters of dystopian literature. A scary prospect for sure. Nevertheless, that is what the end result would be if we force a definition of art on the public. My personal definition is that art is emotion, it's expression, it's vision. How a viewer interprets that vision is personal to them. Imagine a world where a person goes to a museum and see's a Jackson Pollack painting and instead of a description of the year and a blurb about the artist, there was a summary of what emotions said person is suppose to feel. Such a horrible dream seems to be the inception of Zamyatin or Orwell. And one I wish not to live in. So how do we define art? I say don't. Leave it to the person to interpret and draw a conclusion of their own. Leave it to the viewer to feel the emotion it evokes. And let the artist express themselves as they wish. For when you start to categorize innate human emotion is when you start to put the cap on the creative freedom everyone. A brutish reality and a necessary lesson.