M̶o̶d̶e̶r̶n̶ Art--Josh

The cool thing about art, is that you never really know what was going on inside of the creator’s mind at the time of conception. Despite any marxist, feminist, or neoclassical analysis one may engage, they are all solely speculation. Perhaps, Lord of the Flies isn’t actually a social comment on the manifestation of the superego lined with Freudian theories, but merely an extended dream of the mind of William Golding. Literary and art critics can easily become creators of clever allusions to reference deeper thoughts, and are endless in their pursuit behind the true meaning of anything at all. Not to discredit their work, nor the value of critical thinking, however, but sometimes it becomes simply humorous. Recently, I took a trip to some local museums in LA, to get in touch with my sophisticated palate and and mockingly become an art critic myself. One painting in particular, in the simplest terms, was a blue painting. The canvas was moderate in size, and the shade was nothing of excitement. Yet, here I stood, looking at a sixty year old painting, scrutinized for passing the invisible shield protecting a blue object at one of the most respected and prominent modern museums. Maybe slapping “modern” adds some credibility, like the rest of society aren’t as intellectually developed as others and can never capture the true essence of “Abstract Painting: Blue” (and in that case, let me slap “modern” in the title of this submission in case you don’t like it). But then again, I absolutely love how others can marvel at this same painting. Art is defined by the beholder, and beauty is relative. Luckily, this gives some less beautiful individuals, like myself, some hope for the future. “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” holds very true for art. If everyone on Earth held the same taste, I suppose there would just be one, very big, very similar museum. Uniqueness and inquisitivity thrive under such an environment, and create our clothes, our songs, and our minds. Anyway, back to my opening sentence. Art constantly transforms, and will never truly be duplicated. Jazz musicians can improvise a solo, and never be able to replicate the style or tone, even directly after originally playing it. I constantly experience this through my embarrassing inability to draw. One moment, I will blindly sketch lines and shapes in hopes that an image will appear, and sometimes I am surprisingly content with the result. Yet, if I tried to perfect it, copying it over and taking out some of the errors, this end result is never in comparison. The original is perfectly imperfect, and unable to be matched. In the same context, our thoughts are also art. To my experience, I have found much frustration in finding the perfect line for my essay, only to be unable to repeat it when my pen hits the paper. We can never repeat a past thought exactly, because we are always and constantly influenced by new ideas and experiences. This, in my opinion, is the purest form of art. A genuine representation of the mind and the soul, a medium of thought that can never be vocalized, an attempt to communicate the complexities of yourself.