How can the visual arts, which often involve particular
tricks of the eye, liberate one from illusion?
Is it an imposed burden that the visual arts simply do not need? Does it become one more responsibility for
the artist? Both of these are possible
but rather than take the negative way, though that would be worth exploring, I
would like to take the enlightened road toward understanding visual art as
salvation or liberation, as well as how it can lead to the future.
Granted, the blare of popular culture that surrounds one
with the currents of electronic devices may threaten to drown out the inner
voice that struggles to survive. Maybe
it is not so much different now than it was before the electronic age, I don’t
know, but I admit that I imagine that there was less imagery and noise before
it than afterward. And so, I think the
need today for the visual arts and, yes, all the Arts, more than ever for
humanity to gain true perspective.
One way the visual arts, and of course any of the Arts,
have done so is to present another view of the world or even a view of another
world—however construed. In both cases
the viewer realizes another dimension of the world that either they did not
consider or did not even know could be a viable approach to reality. In this way visual art is able to break
through boundaries of old thinking, even that which has been constructed over a
long time.
Another way is that it can offer new sensitivities to
beauty and the meaning of what is attractive, as well as show that which is
rough or ugly may have aesthetic import that rivals that as to what is thought
to have conventional allure. This is
something that the visual arts have done perhaps more than the other arts, in
what pleases the eye may not always make for great visual art and may not also
not make for a great society.
Manufactured elegance becomes trite, banal, and shallow.
If the visual art engages a contemporary or universal
issue, then that would be a direct way into the mind of the audience. The prophetic or philosophical, along with
the pleasure aspect, can move people to think in another way about the
topic. Of course, it may also re-affirm
one to solidify their stance on it too, in contrast to the prophetic
message. But as one writer mentioned,
the Arts are a sort of an early warning line as to the direction of a society,
and it is better to heed the prophet than to stone them.
And so that is the value of the visual arts; providing
another way to comprehend the world as it challenges the complacency of the
status quo, pricks at the aesthetic conscience, and converts the self-righteous
into realization. Pleasure, prophetic,
and philosophical streams all combine to make for a forceful work of art so it
becomes Art, never a monolithic standard but as a guide that points to the
future open to the new possibilities of human existence.
