Appreciating art for art’s sake
Nowadays, everywhere everyone is talking about awareness, our species is going through something like a thought revolution. With all this humongous amount of sensitizing content flowing on the social media that highly influences a broad section of our generation, we are being constantly reminded of the conventional and existing flaws of a typical human’s thought process and behaviour.
We humans have been an admirer and creator of art ever since our cognition grew beyond survival needs. And so we are rightly choosing art (painting, graffiti, dance, songs, drama, theatre, movies, literature, visuals or any other possible form of art) as a weapon to raise concern against all the issues affecting us, be it something like a community suppression continuing since old days in various forms like racism, sexism, casteism etc. (people even claim to be offended by casual ageism), or other issues which were born out of our own deeds of greed and ignorance, like global warming.
It gets on my nerves when art is created for the sake of being marketed in the name of developing social awareness. I am not saying that don’t use art to fight the old and new evils, which do exist, just don’t do it if you are not really intrigued by it, don’t do it if it doesn’t make you push your limits as much as something you really want to create. And please don’t favour and reason the superiority of one artpiece over other just because it has a moral, learn to receive and appreciate art for art’s sake. Every great thing need not bear a message, some things are just grand in their existence, you don’t question their drive.
A tree never said to you to be kind to everyone, to serve others or anything like that, it was you who developed and interpreted all this philosophy, a tree just is what it is, it has been like that ever since, even when we didn’t exist, and it will stay the same even when we cease to exist. Understand it’s importance, it’s grandness not in context to what it gives to you, but just in what it is. Why do we have to be so self-centric even in appreciating the existence of an entity, why can’t we appreciate it without being grateful for what it gives or teaches us?
All the artists and creators out there, I agree you have all the power to influence the opinions and beliefs of the spectators through your artwork and you must harness that power for a good cause. But just don’t compromise with the ideas that really matter to you, let’s create ‘Monalisa’, and let’s sing ‘Counting Stars’, let not your power chain you, let it set you free to create anything in this world or some other.
PS: So next time you go on creating something, say which is to be judged, please don’t make something that you wouldn’t have made if not for the judgement, because then you’ll not be creating ‘your’ artpiece my dear, you’ll just be playing a win-win game.
