Art is What??

I imagine I jump started your heart Sunday with the bright, bloody, curious art of Michael Hussar. It’s (hopefully) not what you’re used to waking up to, that’s for sure.

I’m not used to jump starts. I  don’t need my  blood pumping and rushing through my veins at lightning speed at 8 o’clock in the morning. 

But I came across his art some time ago and it just stuck with me. There is beauty in horror as much as in a field of flowers. Sometimes it’s hard to see the correlation — sometimes I don’t see it at all. But I know it’s there.

Again, it’s all in your perception of art.

Do you have to understand it to appreciate it? Is appreciating it the same as liking it? Do you need to know the personal history of an artist to understand their art?

I believe that knitting a shawl is art. Doing a craft in an evening class is art. Making a suncatcher from a kit is art. But is it high-end art? What makes the dot painting you just completed any different from one by Georges Seurat?

I came across a “famous” artist who is classified as an abstract artist. His work hangs in such institutions as the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, and Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome. They are nothing more than 3 lines of small rectangles that stop halfway through line three. Or 13 beige lines starting on the left side of a brown background and stopping half way across.

I could paint the same thing. I HAVE drawn and colored similar things. What makes his work any more museum-worthy than mine?

These are cosmic questions for another time… questions that really have no answers. So back to my opening spiel.

We all have our favorite artists and forms of art. Most we understand, others we like even though we are clueless as to why. 

Maybe liking certain art simply depends on the time of day you look at it and where you are looking at it and if you had coffee before you look at it or someone else was talking about it.

They say art is subjective. SUBJECTIVE means based on, or influenced by, personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. That tends to be all of us.

I will continue to try and be OBJECTIVE ( not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering or representing facts) in my art selections so our reactions can all be SUBJECTIVE.

Please keep checking in to see which side of the Ob/Subjective line we wander down next!