What is Art Anyway?

When I was young, I used to think that art was this big, extravagant thing. I thoought that artists were people who could not be explained, and were often out-of-this-world crazy in some aspects of their personality. It was only later on in life that I discovered the passion they share for creating wonders and sending messages with a language that is unspoken by words. Ideas are best conveyed by pieces that catch the mind's eye rather than sentences that fall on deaf ears.



Art is a mode of communication. It's beauty can come forth in tens of thousands of ways. Whether it be through the multitudes of possible interpretations of a work, or through the sheer magnitude and gravity of a masterpiece's meaning, depth and significance to a society. It seems that this very strange part of human capacility- the skill to draw, paint, sculpt, imagine.. is often overlooked by those who fiercely believe that logic and reasoning are the only keys to understanding our condition as moral and mortal creatures on this earth.

Both modern and traditional art movements have their place in the history of many societies, conveying importance in whatever those people held dear at the time. Traditionalists often render works that perfect their imagery of certain beliefs and aspects of cultural heritage. Modernists on the other hand, scrape at the possibility of the new, engaging in the contraversial, testing the limits of people's understanding, and challenging the norms to which we have all come to live by.

Every type of information is only made useful when it is spread to more than a single individual. I feel that art is one of the main ways that information is spread. It might not be the most direct way to do this, but it can be the most striking, the most impactful, and certainly the most beautiful of any method known to man in this day and age.

"Distant Memory" A Painting by Chinese Artist Zhang Xiangming, Oil on Canvas