Blog: Art Needs to Be Valued

Featured image: The Grid

What should art be within our culture? There is no question that there will be many diverse answers to that question. Some see art as a social tool to manipulate a political agenda, others see it as something mystical that appears out of nowhere and is beautiful, others see art as historical showing the reality of a time. However you understand or see art, art needs to be questioned as to how it is understood and used.

Art today illustrates the enormous gulf between what we know, that is what is objective, physical, real and knowable and the mystical, the unknowable, superstition and imaginings.

Art can be understood, judged, questioned through the knowable. Art cannot be judged on the unknowable. Aesthetics is not unknowable. Aesthetics are knowable and can be valued as knowable, beautiful and real. Aesthetics magnify discovery. And are identified and judged through our lives and how we live our lives.

For an artist that means judging the work they create through the abstract meaning of their work. Abstract meaning is the concept/s that are formed by the artist through real life experiences. If an artist can convey meaning that can be understood and seen by a viewer, by one who would judge it then it can be valued.

Art needs to be valued. How we value art, is the same as how we personally value life.