Hello, welcome to the article on my thoughts about art.
Recently I went to an art museum in Los Angeles full of abstract art pictures, shapes, and paintings. I have tried to intercept some of those paintings and shapes from the painter’s perspective but few were too funny from a common man’s eye to even try intercepting.
I am neither a genius nor know the art to experience joy. To help us understand there are small text cards placed under the paintings explaining a little about the artist’s intention. Most of them had references to history (which I have no clue about). When I started thinking about this more, I felt – without context art is just a color palette (could be visually appealing though).
Similarly, sometimes when I watch a high-rated movie after searching on IMDB – I end up not understanding the movie at all. Then, I search for one more video on youtube trying to understand what the director/writer meant to say. I often find most of the videos explaining the same stuff I watched and can’t make any sense of it. I am not against complex art forms or movies that take time to understand (like open-ended movies) and I like them, just take recursion as an analogy (at least tough for me) you should know the base call in order to understand how those unit solutions are solving the bigger problem.
That is when I felt art requires context. This sounds very obvious, and easy to notice especially in memes. Today, everything is filled with memes from advertising to teaching. We laugh a lot at memes that we can relate (i.e.) we have context about. Sadly, our parents with glasses on their nose tip often glare at them thinking how could you be laughing at that meme all the while when they can barely process what’s going on.
Recently, I watched a critically acclaimed movie “The Menu” which kind of says the same point in the most complex way possible (maybe that’s what the director wanted to convey). Though I didn’t understand anything immediately after watching – but after a while I could make a little sense of it. Synopsys of the movie is that the main character (a chef) becomes super frustrated with his life running behind more and more extreme fancy items that a simple “Cheeseburger” ordered by the main lady of the film flatters him. This cheeseburger in the movie refers to the object with the most reference (At least that’s what I derived).
End of the day, this cycle still happens in my life. I keep watching these complex no-clue movies and even go to the abstract art museum (coming out in like 5 mins). Why do I end up in there in the first place? – maybe I am just buying the hype.
Peace!
engineeringvsme 