art and identity -- form in the fog

‘who are you? who, who? -- who, who?’ According to ancient greeks and new-age gurus it’s not question many of us could answer successfully. Oh sure, we can list our profession and annual income, cite educational achievement and awards and such as that, offer testimonials from friends, family, and fellow workers, but the mellow tones of enlightenment assure us, that person could be anybody. Our individual identity, they say, lies elsewhere. True or not, this notion leaves the average commuter feeling lost and unsure, and many seek relief in fervent allegiance to causes, political parties, and an assortment of religions. We all get to choose.

Becoming involved with art is more of a do-it-yourself deal. Art can be as deep or shallow as you need it to be. Soup cans with their glamorous entourage captivate some but it’s a sad reflection to have, is all. For the more thoughtful, art extends as far as humanity has ever been, and comes down to us not in biased ever-changing translations but in pictures everyone sees for themselves. Ancient hunts, military campaigns, and agrarian festivals all go directly into the brain, there to link up with whatever similar experiences the individual viewer has already had. It’s a very neat process. 

In more recent times, some would say since the advent of the camera, visual art has ramped-up its ambition, attempting to express areas of thought and feeling beyond just what our senses report. It’s an unregulated zone, strictly buyer-beware where carnival barkers offer enormous returns on investment side-by-side with serious practitioners, and the naive with too much money are constantly getting burned. Now this is fun -- an endless branching market of stalls and kiosks, a place to stroll and learn and recognize, not what signposts say is good, not the touting of tourist guides, not what anyone else thinks at all, but just what appeals to, say, you. It’s there somewhere in the infinite array of art available these days.

The art a person collects can be very revealing to the observant visitor, but also and foremost to the owner, themselves, who both express and ground who they are by the art they choose to live with. It doesn’t answer the question of who we are, really, but it is a peg on which to hang a hat.