Ellen Dissanayake discusses the nature of which art is supposed to bring out in people. She talks about the idea of disinterest when viewing an art piece, in which “viewers could appreciate any art” even if the cultures were far removed from their own (p.18). This idea took art to a new level, since paintings were admire without it being a reflection of one’s own nature to be appreciated. Instead the reasoning the piece was supposed to original mean lost some of its importance, and instead asks the viewer to invoke ideas that may or may not conflict. This was a struggle for critics that wanted a way to measure whether a piece was good or bad based on what it meant. Thus they believe that to truly appreciate art, you had to treat it almost like a religion, in which if the viewer must be educated about the subject before making any judgments. But art isn’t something that can be forced by other to understand, and not even the creator dictates how you might interpret their piece, that is something that can only be relied on by the viewer’s themselves, and through their own experience and knowledge in life, they can make their own analysis of the work in front of them. As Dissanayake says, art is something that is natural, such as “language, sex, sociability, aggression, or any of the other characteristics of human nature” (p.4). It is form of communication that is embedded into every human being on this planet, and just like all the other forms of communication, it varies greatly from one to another. Art is made to ask questions that cannot be easily spoken with words. Art is a question that takes many forms of understanding, with just as many answers waiting to be spoken by people of many different knowledge.
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Hi, Zhennan. I have different opinions with you that “art isnt something that can be forced by other to understand, and not even the creator dictates how you might interpret their piece, that is something that can only be relied on by the viewer’s themselves, and through their own experience and knowledge in life, they can make their own analysis of the work in front of them”. I think the artworks could reflect artist’s emotion and opinions so I believe that the artists could affect the viewers to understand the artworks though some details in the artworks. Also, I think sometimes our understanding of an artwork could be influenced by someone. For example, the instructor of art course could tell us something about the artworks so I believe it must affect our understanding in a certain extent. Of course, I agree that understanding art is mainly relied on own experience and knowledge.
i found your post very interesting to read and your interpretation on art. I completely agree that art isn’t something that can be forced to learn. I would argue that the artist doesn’t quiet make his viewers interpret a true meaning. I believe that is many different ways and views that can be seen in an art piece. Dissanayake says “…beauty that governs all the arts and indeed make them not simply paintings or statues, but examples of fine “art” (pg 3) to emphasize the value of all art. How do you believe art will evolve in the near future? if so, to extent? We may never know the ‘value’ to all art, but I do believe that people will begin to appreciate it more and more as we grow as civilized people.