The Arts in Our Lives

The Arts are all around us in the modern world. We are constantly listening to music, seeing visual images in TV and in advertising, however, before this class, I had not considered what a powerful communicator art and visual expression could be. Now, I look at a poster and I think what message this is trying to convey. Through one of our very informative art lessons, we were given information on the ways in which an artist can convey what they're trying to say. The objects, colour, lines, shapes and materials are methods of communication. The objects depicted can be quite an obvious one. However, sometimes the message the objects convey can be more subtle. In fact, Kester (2004, pg 13) goes as far as to say about avant garde work that it has an 'inscrutability and resistance to interpretation' rather than being about clichés.


The message that is conveyed is often challenging something in society, the commonly held views and social conventions. Kester (2004) gives an example of how some artists communicate things that challenge the social norms. He told of an artist who didn't use tangible materials but rather sociopolitical relations. The materials too can show what the artist is trying to communicate. The artist pulled together people of different political views and standings and asked them to take part in a discussion on a boat in a lake in Switzerland. He asked them to discuss the problem of drug addicted prostitutes in Switzerland. He found that as they challenged each other's views, their own views changed.

I have discovered that more conventional art can do this too. We studied a piece in our art lessons by Joan Eardley. The subject was a young boy called Andrew Samson. He wore scruffy clothes which were too big for him and was very slim. He was a Glaswegian boy from a family of 12 and living in a cramped 2 bedroom apartment. The artist wanted to capture the poverty and the hardship this boy had seen. She wanted to capture him just as he was and let the picture speak for itself. She contradicted social views of these boys being always in trouble and causing mischief. In the picture, the boy had a slightly haunted look to his eyes. He was not the carefree, trouble-making youngster that people sometimes assumed him to be. She used colour and tone to emphasise the boy. She gave him dark shadows and hollowed out cheeks. Even the settings she painted him in were dark.

A big change this piece and genre of art has made to my thinking is that art is doesn’t have to about capturing beauty or even self-expression. Kester calls it a ‘communicative exchange(2004, pg 106).’ I expected to see works of great beauty in the art gallery; instead I saw a series of messages with each one speaking into a contemporary issue. I have learnt to look in modern art for what the artist might be trying to say to me, instead of looking only for beauty.

References
 
Kester. G (2004), Conversation Pieces, London, University of California Press
http://www.heraldscotland.com/hidden-fires-1.835540