Art is merely – the use of skill to devise an aesthetic result.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude Running Fence, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California 1972-76 Photo: Wolfgang Volz © 1976 Christo Click for ChristoJeanneClaude.net
Art can be as simple as Bill Cosby’s idea of a child putting a nick in a stick for his mother, or as grandiose as Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s miles of fabric across landscape.
Art has one particularly notable aspect. Unlike phenomena in physical sciences, its key facets of aesthetics, beauty and feelings, cannot be measured. It defines the difference between objective and subjective.Emotional Impact
Only You Know How you Feel about an Art work. We can not accurately tell someone else how they feel. Telling someone else how they should feel is a presumptuous insult, especially about art.
So don’t let an art expert tell you which art you should like, or shouldn’t.
If you like an art work – that’s great. But you don’t need training to know what feels good. (1)
If you don’t like a work – that’s fine too; don’t worry about it — not even for a moment. (However, that is no reason to publicly offend the artist with your lack of delight.)
Intellectual Delight
Now beyond the raw emotional impact you might get from an image is an intellectual delight it may give you. (This is where art experts can help you.)
Blue Feather
Woman's Sunlit Cheek
Good art, like good writing and good teaching, is what jumps off the work and stays in your mind.
Great art does that and more; it enkindles and ignites you to create new ideas . . . the more the better.
- David Dilworth, 2009
Notes:
(1) Recently after hearing some fabulous sounds, upon my inquiry, a charming and gorgeous woman delightedly reported she’d had . . . , well . . . an orgasm while viewing one of these images.
I leave it to you to see if you can figure out which image. The only hint you get is that there is no human visible. (and wow! do I now have an exciting new goal for my photographs . . . :-)
