Pretentious.

Now for one of the most pretentious topics known to man. Art. A friend of mine inspired this one.


I remember someone telling me once that outside factors shouldn't be brought into consideration when looking at art, because it isn't relevant to the piece itself. They said this was "basic aesthetic philosophy". For a while I thought about that. Sure, there's some reasonable stuff there. The age of the artist, for instance, doesn't matter at all. Whether or not the artist was convicted of murder, that doesn't matter either. None of it matters. If it's a good painting, sculpture, whatever, then you don't need to be enticed with compelling stories to enjoy it. If you do, then it's probably not good enough on it's own.

At some point, however, this starts to break down. For most pieces of art the meaning and purpose aren't entirely clear, and you need to understand the context. This sometimes requires outside information. Occasionally it's as revealing as the title, and occasionally you have to dig deeper. Take, for instance, the painting above. This one is incredibly popular, but for those of you who don't know it, you're probably experiencing pain, suffering, chaos, and, with the complete lack of color, perhaps you're feeling depressed and dreary. For those of you who do know, this piece is called "Geurnica", and it's by Pablo Picasso. It's about the bombing of a city with the same name, which mostly consisted of civilians. Now all those feelings make more sense, and it enhances the effect of an already powerful painting. You could even look further into the inspiration behind it to understand the symbolism.

But that's all the point. Sometimes outside factors are relevant. Now the question is only of discerning when that is.

I'm liking these short posts.

Since we're on the topic of abstract Spanish artists, here's Salvador Dali: