The World of Art

The beauty of art and of an artist is the subjectivity required to determine inside each of us what art is and what it isn’t. Anything can be art to anyone. The non-specific nature of art is its strength. It can be fluid and metaphysically permeate into the minds of those who view it or listen to it. Two people can walk into an art gallery and get two completely different things out of it. Art is sort of like philosophy in this way. Everyone has their own version of philosophy. No one is right, no one is wrong, but we can all agree that each sense of art is our own.

There are different techniques that can be employed and some may feel these techniques are more or less artistic than others. For example, some people might have a problem with digital art and favor folk art instead. Some might feel the opposite, that folk art is too passé and that to stay relevant and artistic, you have to change with the times and digital art. Art doesn’t even have to adhere to just images. Artists can be of any discipline, whether it is music, or writing or film.

Some people like to divide art into two main categories: abstract and concrete. To analogize the difference: in concrete art, a tree is a tree; in abstract art, a tree is your feelings about the life. Concrete art usually focuses on the accurate depiction of details, or the details themselves. The soul of concrete art comes from the passion the artist puts into the work. Abstract art usually focuses on the attempt at accurately depicting feelings or thoughts. It worries less about the details of the figure that is being drawn and more about the feelings the artist has and how they change the figure that is being drawn. The soul of abstract art comes from the passion the artist puts into the conveyance of their feelings or thoughts.

Most everyone will agree, regardless of their preference of art, that art has to have a soul. Art is no good if it is soulless. Those who are not students of art might not know that Adolph Hitler was actually a painter. Art teachers and critics saw Hitler’s paintings (presumably saw no soul) and didn’t approve of them. On a purely technical level, Hitler’s paintings were fine. They accurately depicted exactly what he wanted to depict, but without the soul behind the paintings, they were doomed for the obscurity of college art classes.