What is it about art?

There are many forms of art, and many ways for art to enter our lives.

Of the forms, to name a few, there is visual art including drawing and painting, sculpture, prose, music, poetry... the list of art forms is surprisingly long.

And then, to increase my fascination, in each of the many forms, there are many genres.

"Genre" is itself complex.

Genre is a word of French origin, and in French it means kind, type or sort, and in that way it has a broader meaning in French than it does in English. Just saying "genre" is a tad difficult for English speakers. Speaking only of my own experience, even though I am fluently bilingual, there is always a moment's hesitation before I utter the word in English. It's one of those pronunciation challenges.

Narrowing the focus to visual art, there are many ways that art enters our lives.

We see it constantly. It's on billboards, in commercials, in graffiti. Logos are visual art. Clothing often displays art. 

We buy it, directly and indirectly. When we buy actual art, we typically display it by hanging it on our walls. We come to collect it in that way.

We also collect it by photographing the art we see. Sometimes the photographed art shows up in our screensavers. My art screensaver currently displays close to 900 works of art. If I owned all those works, the aggregate value would be millions, and millions and millions of dollars.

But, at least in my case, it's not about the money.

So what is it about art?

Today I came across a couple of long articles in the New York Times. The articles were about art shows currently offered in New York City. 

One show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is titled "Krasner and Pollock" and it focuses on the abstract expressionism genre made famous by Jackson Pollock back in the 1940's and 50's. Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock's wife, also a renowned artist, was for a number of years overshadowed by her husband.

The other article is about a show at the Javits Center for New York City's Art Week and that show features works by 12 contemporary artists.

The long-standing joke that I have heard more times than I can count, that is usually told when people see an abstract expressionist work is "oh, I could do that!"

That's a photo of Autumn Rhythm: Number 30, a work done by Jackson Pollock in 1950. It's the kind of art that can often trigger that joke. Fair enough, I get it.

And yet, I would love to have that work hanging in our home. Not because it might be worth over a hundred million dollars, but because it's complex, its colours are complex. Though it's just static paint on a flat canvas, it's full of complex motion. The complexity invites me to stare and stare and stare. in that way it comes to spark emotion.

And there you have it. Art can inspire us. It offers sights and scenes that, but for the particular work, we would not have experienced. In a way, it is constantly opening windows and doors in our minds. Every day the hundreds of works of art in my screensaver cycle randomly on my computer monitors. I pay attention. Not always, but often. Every now and then I see an aspect of a work that I am seeing for the first time. The works are expressions of many genres, produced by artists of many schools, from 19th century portraiture, to impressionism, to abstract expressionism, and funky Pop Art that I have seen in forms ranging from paintings, to prints, to statues. Almost all the walls of our home display art. It's not about the value of the collection, it's about the beauty and variety of the work. The works speak to me in the same way as those in my screensaver speak to me. But there's more, much more. Each work on our walls has a context, a space in my memory, where I was when I acquired the work, where I was when our parents acquired a work. A number of works we inherited from our parents. Some of those works cast my mind back decades and decades and summon deeply meaningful memories. I look at a work, and I see and hear family members who are no longer with us, and yet I hear the words they spoke and the unique tone of their voice. It's as if 1966 was yesterday.