A Journey into ArtWhen I was a kid I didn’t realize that the stars were always in the sky, whether it was night or day mattered little to me, I thought that like most kids my age that stars didn’t exist during the day. I didn’t know that I couldn’t see the other stars because of the strong light cast by the sun.We all have a tendency to believe in what we see. However there certainly are things that might be true that exists behind our first perceptions even if we can’t recognize or see it at first. So sometimes we shouldn’t just look at the things as they are, we should also try to find out some meaning it might be have beyond its appearance.Art, especially drawings, have power over us when we look at them. They help us to think and sometimes make us search out their meaning. they can make us feel, help us to evoke certain emotions when we look at them. When we look at one piece of artwork it helps our thoughts to grow, to flourish. How come these pieces of paintings have that kind ofs, artists have tried to communicate through their work. Paintings were used to communicate because of the lack of an established written language. Also during the middle-ages in history, art also had its role for propagating religious doctrine to teach people who couldn’t read or write. Therefore the paintings during those times had a lot of religious allegories in them.Since the arts doesn’t simply present the objects artists perceive, when we see the arts, we also don’t just look at the object in that context, we sometimes find certain important characteristics of that subject or the emotions the artist might have been trying to put into his work. When we see those works of art that have a great sense of emotion in them, it is noticeable. It helps the viewer feel a great empathy with the artist who did the work. However just feeling some empathy in front of a painting sometimes does not seem to be enough. Since it is hard at times to express those feelings we get from our eyes and eeat talent that God gave to the artist, it makes us nervous” (759). But real art also could make us sometimes “dumbed” down because at times it seems really bright as the sun, so bright in fact that we can not see it with our bare eyes and would rather not look at it because the art is just too abstract for us to look at and too difficult to grasp the meaning of. Forster said in his “The Raison d’Etre of Criticism in the Arts,” “criticism can stimulate. Few of us are sufficiently awake to the beauty and wonder of the world, and when art intervenes to reveal them it sometimes acts in reverse, and lowers a veil instead of raising it” (110). We might also need some more knowledge or criticism in order to understand the communication between artists and the common layman.After some research about Vermeer and reading what some said critics on the painting, the blur in my mind might have gotten somewhat more focused by my gained knowledge. When researching and looking at some other paintings fixed within her confines she manifests a unity, a concentration of being, a capacity to exist at the center of the present moment. She, more than he, seems open to horizons (88-89).However Lawrence Weschier points out that, “Vermeer’s paintings all but cry out this person is not to be seen as merely a type, a trope, an allegory. If she is standing for anything, she is standing for the condition of being a unique individual human being, worthy of our own unique individual response” (par.18). After researching and reading about what critics had to say about Vermeer’s painting, I could come up with some stories what Vermeer might have told us. However I can’t say this was what Vermeer was trying to tell us. In fact, there can never be an absolutely right or wrong interpretation of a painting. Arguably the artist himself might know, but the important thing is how we attempt to participate in the art.However Annie Dillard said in “Seeing,” “if we are blinded by darkness, we are also blind to see the arts.Walker Percy said in her essay “The Loss of the Creature” “The layman will be seduced as long as he regards beings as consumer items to be experienced rather than prizes to be won and as long as he waives his sovereign rights as a person and accepts his role of consumer as the highest estate to which the layman can aspire” (436). The viewer could refer to the information and knowledge he received or also refer to the way critics made their inquiry towards art, but he should not be seduced by the theories that are made by others, and just stop there. In the end that person is not looking at the art through his own eyes, but through other peoples’ perceptions. He is merely enjoying the others’ inquiry, not directly looking at the art for himself but instead losing his “sovereign” eyes.The important thing will be how we journey with art when we encounter it. If we don’t know anything about the road called art, by just keeping your heart and instinct open we may be lost inGE 1
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