Do not stop sharing your ideas about beauty, but I’m going to toss out another topic for discussion.

One of the things I am interested in talking about in conjunction with the exhibition is how art contributes to the conversation about global environmental health. Because, you know, it’s art. It’s not photojournalism, it’s not advertising, it’s not activism. It’s not usually prescriptive and it is often ambiguous. So then what does it do? I started thinking about it in relationship to science. Scientists make and test hypotheses about the world, then see if they can consistently reproduce the same results. As a culture, we are heavily invested in our belief in this Artists also ask a lot of questions but they don’t often present us with clear answers or conclusions. What’s the point of an inquiry that doesn’t result in a solution? The conclusion that I came to is that art isn’t about finding answers but it is about finding truths. Because art speaks to us as individuals, one-on-one, it’s a very direct and private form of communication, one that each of us has to participate in actively. Artists hand us their questions to ponder and to share with others. By being nonverbal, open-ended, and personal, visual art can bypass our overactive brains and get under our skins, affecting us in a visceral way that cold, hard facts cannot.

Does that ring true for any of you? What do you see as art’s role in society?
 

Comments

Katherine Ware
Posts: 2
Comment
Belief Barriers
Reply #2 on : Thu March 10, 2011, 17:22:00
This is a really interesting problem in the enterprise of persuasion. It's true that we are all looking at the world through belief-tinted glasses that color everything we see and experience. My thought is that this is why the effective strategy for communication may be the one in which artists try to engage viewers in the questioning process. Each person has to take that journey from his own starting point, whatever that may be, and if the endpoint is a little different from the beginning, then he arrives there on his own steam rather than being told what to think. Whaddaya make of that?
Steven Rudnick
Posts: 2
Comment
Art and Science
Reply #1 on : Wed March 09, 2011, 10:37:58
"As a culture, we are heavily invested in our belief in this Artists also ask a lot of questions but they don’t often present us with clear answers or conclusions"

Herein lies a major problem. Our first reponse is generally based in our beliefs and as a result we are often quick to reject science because the conclusions to not fit our belief system.