🌱 If you have a soul, you are an artist
If you have a body, you are an athlete
- Bill Bowerman
I don't consider myself to be very artistic. I was never proud of my drawings and paintings in school, and I'm not a trained dancer, guitarist, pianist, or singer. Throughout my life, art has always felt a bit out of reach.
I walk through museums puzzled, sometimes wondering why I just don't get it. Half the time, I don't understand why humanity has decided that some works by the likes of Matisse and Monet are priceless. A quarter of the time, I'm even more confused by abstract paintings that are nothing more than black-and-white stripes. Luckily, I do find beauty in the remaining twenty-five percent.
Sometimes, the plaques on the museum wall can read like a high school junior's English essay, probing the void in search of a deeper meaning. Other times, I genuinely find beauty in the gallery. So I'm confused—how do I really feel about art?
I guess it makes sense that an art piece art cannot—and will not—make sense to everyone.
It took me a while to realize that the point of making art isn't to be good at it, and the point of consuming art isn't to fully understand it.
The purpose of art
I believe that the reasons we create art are slightly different from the reasons we consume art. The purpose of making art is simply to satisfy the human desire to create, while the purpose of consuming art is simply to feel something.
We create art to convey a message, evoke a feeling, or express ourselves. I'm not a born singer, but I'll sing endless covers of Butterfly. And my pottery collapses when I try to lift the walls, but I'll gladly spend hours at the wheel. Humans have a latent desire to create things, and art fulfills that purpose.
Meanwhile, we consume art to be moved. There's no mandate to replicate the artist's mind in our own. Art can simply make you feel something, and that's enough. You can choose to map that feeling onto the artist's life, your own life, or any other world you could imagine. You don't have to feel like you fully understand art to appreciate it.
It's hard to move people with just competence. Irreverence and evoking a feeling are things that move people. Not competence.
- Jacob Collier, Masterclass @ UC Santa Barbara