Understanding is an art and not everyone is an artist

Understanding art is an optional extra that gives more depth to your appreciation of the art. Art is not just an individual artist's expression. It is always made in the context of a particular society, and almost all artists also have an education in art as part of their training. The bible tells us that all good things come from God…Proverbs 9:10 (NIV bible)

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One (Holy Spirit) is understanding.”

And we know that not everyone can understand. People understand what you tell them on their level, not on yours - if they are not skilled artists they will misunderstand and the next thing you know you’re up on a cross with people shouting and jeering at you and that line of thinking is not necessarily connected to the ideal of the individual creative genius who expresses their inner emotional life through their art.

Consider Vincent Van Gogh and Beethoven are artists that fit this mold very well but an earlier artist such as JS Bach would have been quite repelled by the idea as his artistic work was conceived as a public act of devotion to God. To express individual and personal feelings would be quite inappropriate to that type of artist as they are interested in the universal and eternal and wouldn't choose to put their emotions at the centre of their work.

Therefore, why is it important to 'understand' art? I think a better version of the idea is that it's important to 'engage' with art - to develop an understanding of your own relationship with it. That's what it's there for. Using the word engage allows us a greater range of possible relationships with art and includes the possibility of responding emotionally or kinetically (dancing) both of which don't rely on understanding as such.

And to draw from the work of more artists, engaging with art allows us to experience uncertainty - a balance between the expected and the unexpected. Sport allows that also. You don't know exactly what will happen before a game but you know what types of things are likely. With sport the rules are explicit and agreed upon and the outcome is objective. We can all agree who won a tennis match and disputed referee calls can even now be checked using neutral technology that won't favour either side.

And with art the rules are not fixed but there are some rules there - some expectations that can either be confirmed or thwarted. Individual subjectivity is allowed. Art can be successful for one person and a failure for another with all kinds of gradations in-between. Different people can use different criteria for evaluating art and reach completely different conclusions about it without doing anything invalid.

Of course there's also an objective side to art. People's responses are rooted in the experience of something outside of themselves - an object. The qualities of that object (which can be any perceptual field where aesthetic evaluation takes place e.g. conceptual art) dictate the range of responses available and some interpretations would widely be considered unjustifiable but the process of deciding which is an ongoing cultural conversation open to all manner of participation.

People saying art is to be felt are quite correct. One of the primary things art is for is to elicit emotional responses. Some art is more intellectual, but a lot of art speaks to our emotions. So feeling your responses to it is a great approach to art. Understanding art is an optional extra that gives more depth to your appreciation of the art. And art is not just an individual artist’s expression. It is always made in the context of a particular society, and almost all artists also have an education in art as part of their training. So their art becomes not only an act of personal expression but also a contribution to an ongoing discussion among artists through history, with artists of each generation contributing new ideas and responses to other artists’ work.

Understanding the social context in which they were working, and understanding the progression of that artistic conversation up to the point where they produced their work, helps you to appreciate more about what led them to create what they did. Stay blessed! #kishoreshintre #ks1000articles #proudtobeindian