We each exist in a perceptual net, sound, sight, and smell forming the world around us, forming us. More than just passive receivers, we quite intentionally tune our personal antennae for levels and distinctions we’re already used to and have come to expect, the ‘rut‘ of daily living. Art is our handle on a chaotic reality allowing us adjustments and recalibrations, opening the portals to fresh experience, and keeping the whole business pliable and able to change. As a fact, art has always been mankind’s mental control panel, the hidden dashboard, the key to altering the code that determines what’s real, and museums reveal how succeeding epics went about it.
We humans inhabit an ever-morphing reality not easy to pin down. Is the planet thousands or billions of years old, is there an afterlife and what are its conditions, such as that, and dynasties use art to construct the field of play, to determine the rules and boundaries, and to make sure they stay on top. Aware of art’s influence, these days it falls on the individual to find the art that enhances their own place on the planet, that helps them see better days and do better things. There’s a vast array out there.
A lot of the art we encounter, art in this case meaning any created version of reality, the pickup moving a mountain, a pain medication bestowing bliss, is unavoidable really, from billboards to popups. We are free to choose, however, the art on our own walls, and that has its influence on how we see the world as well, how we process new facts, how aware we are of our immediate environment, how seriously we see ourselves when we glance in the mirror. That’s a lot to ask but art is powerful stuff, just ask the Egyptians, the Mayans, any monolithic culture that maintained its total world order by controlling art, and we have the evidence on hand.
An art that transports would probably be a dangerous thing, and since the middle ages we’ve become harder to impress, but a little painting for the kitchen, maybe a bigger one over a couch, nudging us awake, adding a little flavor and coaxing us to notice just a little more, is not that hard to find.
We humans inhabit an ever-morphing reality not easy to pin down. Is the planet thousands or billions of years old, is there an afterlife and what are its conditions, such as that, and dynasties use art to construct the field of play, to determine the rules and boundaries, and to make sure they stay on top. Aware of art’s influence, these days it falls on the individual to find the art that enhances their own place on the planet, that helps them see better days and do better things. There’s a vast array out there.
A lot of the art we encounter, art in this case meaning any created version of reality, the pickup moving a mountain, a pain medication bestowing bliss, is unavoidable really, from billboards to popups. We are free to choose, however, the art on our own walls, and that has its influence on how we see the world as well, how we process new facts, how aware we are of our immediate environment, how seriously we see ourselves when we glance in the mirror. That’s a lot to ask but art is powerful stuff, just ask the Egyptians, the Mayans, any monolithic culture that maintained its total world order by controlling art, and we have the evidence on hand.
An art that transports would probably be a dangerous thing, and since the middle ages we’ve become harder to impress, but a little painting for the kitchen, maybe a bigger one over a couch, nudging us awake, adding a little flavor and coaxing us to notice just a little more, is not that hard to find.
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