Fast food is bad for you. Politicians are preparing legislation – no more toys in happy meals in California, fewer sugary drinks in the vending machines. The franchises, themselves, are upgrading their menus. People are beginning to notice what they put in their mouths. They demand more nutrition, less fillers, a more profound food experience. A new health-consciousness blossoms in the community mind, and everything changes. Quality improves. The food is better and people are healthier, presumably happier, and we wonder how we could have poisoned ourselves for so long. Still, these same people, us, will look at anything.
Food is physical, has weight and texture, while visual images are only mental, ephemeral, easily manipulated and supposedly private. Seeing is conditioned by expectation and experience, which means we see what we’ve seen before, and not much else. If our visual diet is rush hour traffic twice a day and crime drama on TV at night, our ability to get much out of leaning over the rail at the grand canyon will be limited. Art is about visual nutrition, vitamins for the senses. The reason to own and live with art is to open the mind to real-life experiences, situations, decisions that have to be made.
Does it work? Probably wouldn’t fit on a scale or graph, but listen to the testimony of ordinary people who have made sacrifices to own art. They’re not willing to trade back because of tangible differences they feel in broader areas of their lives. Digital reality is a long strip mall of empty calories, enough to live on but insubstantial and fleeting – the thumbnail Picasso no different than the thumbnail moon landing. An actual work of art direct from the hand of an artist has more juice in it than all the virtual tours of all the museums in the world, and it’s never consumed – it just gets stronger, more vital, more healing.
Food is physical, has weight and texture, while visual images are only mental, ephemeral, easily manipulated and supposedly private. Seeing is conditioned by expectation and experience, which means we see what we’ve seen before, and not much else. If our visual diet is rush hour traffic twice a day and crime drama on TV at night, our ability to get much out of leaning over the rail at the grand canyon will be limited. Art is about visual nutrition, vitamins for the senses. The reason to own and live with art is to open the mind to real-life experiences, situations, decisions that have to be made.
Does it work? Probably wouldn’t fit on a scale or graph, but listen to the testimony of ordinary people who have made sacrifices to own art. They’re not willing to trade back because of tangible differences they feel in broader areas of their lives. Digital reality is a long strip mall of empty calories, enough to live on but insubstantial and fleeting – the thumbnail Picasso no different than the thumbnail moon landing. An actual work of art direct from the hand of an artist has more juice in it than all the virtual tours of all the museums in the world, and it’s never consumed – it just gets stronger, more vital, more healing.
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