art, art, and more art

As creative beings, the art we make through whatever outlet we go about making it is often misperceived. Every day we walk by things that may be the most beautiful thing on earth to some people. But do you ever wonder why we don’t see the beauty in everything we touch, smell, hear, or feel? Why it that a canvas entirely covered in red acrylic paint is less worthy than a Renee Magritte painting? Perhaps the artist had the same motives as Magritte, why are they immediately categorized as a mediocre artist? Of course not everyone would feel so coldly towards that one piece, but as humans we find ourselves walking by it without even thinking of it more than a red piece of canvas.

Art is defined by its display to a certain extent. There are many meanings are arguments about what exactly art is. Going back on my blog post from yesterday, we use our appearance to show people what we think art is. We dress a certain way because our bodies are our canvas. We have meaning to the way we dress or how we do our hair and makeup. Maybe there’s that certain building that you pass every day on your way home for school that you think is magnificent and no one else agrees. Perhaps that building is beautiful because of where it stands and where it has been. This leads us to think, does location of art work at to its definition? If we put the coffee mug that we drank our coffee in this morning in a museum, what would people think? Maybe you received that mug from your grandmother. Would people notice it because it is in a museum rather than in your sink? The answer is that it most likely will get noticed more. When that mug is placed in a museum people start to think about what that mug meant to the person it belonged to.

In Take the Cannoli, Sarah Vowell makes it clear that she has a love for music. During her trip to New York she would stop by the infamous Chelsea Hotel. If you’re a New York native and a music lover you know that the Chelsea Hotel was a hot spot for famous musicians in the 1960’s. Being a home to artists such as Bob Dylan, Charles Bukowski and Janis Joplin it held a pretty big name for itself. The shabby hotel had been the drug invested- lyric-writing hotspot in the 60’s. Sarah talked about the rooms in the hotel room were almost like exhibits. There had been people who have wanted to tear the famous hotel down, but many argued not to. There was something about that hotel and what it’s been through that had made it beauty evident.