Art and discovery

“What’s the point?” After watching the artwork of David Ellis and Blu I asked myself that very question. My answer was that maybe the point it brought up was in fact the question of “What is the point?”

Art can be literal, meaningful, colorful, creative and engaging. Art can also be wonderment, plain, ugly, pointless and uninvolving. The same exact piece of art can mean one thing to someone and to another person it can be something completely opposite. Erwin Panofsky writes in his essay “Art History and Art Theory” about the dilemma of art from a psychological stance.
“If a definition of a work of art can be attempted at all, it would have to go along these lines: the work of art examined from an ontological perspective is an argument between volume and form, while the work of art examined from a methodological perspective is an argument between space and time. Only within this pattern of correlations can the work of art be understood” (pg 46).

In the artwork created by Ellis and Blu I saw how they transformed a run-down building in the city into a canvas. Some may think it is intriguing and beautiful while others may think it is wasteful and ugly. I personally thought it was awesome. The picture transcended from one thing to the next in such a cohesive way that I didn’t want to look away and miss out on what was taking place.

At the end though I thought, “What was the point?” I didn’t know what to write about or where to even kick-start my thoughts. Yes, it was capturing and engaging but how did it relate to me? I then thought, maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe art can be meaningless and can just get us to clear out minds rather than sit there, filling it with clutter of what it “might” be. I am sure some people took away meaning from the art, and that’s great. But walking away from it with a new idea of what art can be satisfies me just as much, if not more than finding an answer.