Art is a language. Art is a contradiction. It universally speaks for us and goes against two conflicting ideas people come up with. Art has its bad and good effects. This so happens to create various meanings towards art and how significant it turns out to be. The logic behind art’s opposing sides is introduced in Oscar Wilde’s “Preface” to The Picture of Dorain Gray Art, Plato’s Republic VII, and Kenneth Koch’s On Aesthetics. These authors show how simple and complicated art can get, which ends up creating contradictions for itself.
Art is its own consequences where creativity lies because it expands the mind in different directions, whether in the light or dark path. It becomes our friend and our enemy, depending on a person’s perspective. This makes our language, art, a complicated contradiction we live with. ?? Art contradicts itself within people’s minds and thoughts. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, he states, ” ‘Anyone with any sense,’ I said, ‘would remember that people’s eyesight can be impaired in two quite different ways, and for two quite different reasons,” which supports the fact that art can be interpreted in many ways due to it’s contradictions (101).
Some argue that art was brought up for a reason, while others believe that it has no purpose at all. That’s the process of how two meanings are formed because of the different ways we view certain things, just as Plato states. In some cases, people will argue that art was just another random act in our world that was brought up because it just so happened to be created without any reason. The contradiction lies within people’s state of mind, thinking that art is here for a reason because as everyone says “Everything happens for a reason.
We probably gave art a reason to live, when in reality it could have been an accident that somehow that changed our lives. The other contradiction lies in the meaning art is given by people who define art to have no definition. Sometimes art shouldn’t be forced to serve as a specific function because many people tend to overanalyze what it is. On the other hand, since people find a reason for everything, it is possible that art does have a purpose. The purpose being a form of escape, freedom, a creative outlet. Art has become important to us because it is our comfort zone.
It welcomes us and offers people the chance to be good at something with the freedom art shares. We start to value art because it helps express ourselves and brings happiness, which then becomes a vital part of our lives. We also attach ourselves to art because it helps us grow mentally. Sometimes it gives us the strength to move on and appreciate life more, as it reveals the truth. The only side effect to this is that the truth isn’t so pretty after all and when art reveals that to the people, they may not be able to handle it.
Art transforms people into having too much of an open mind, that they soon become “crazy” or “insane” and so on. This contradicts what art is “meant” to do. ?? Similar as to how art is given a definition of having purpose or no purpose at all, it can be compared to the play of our actual language. Sometimes having a language, despite the different nationalities, makes us feel superior to animals. In reality it doesn’t because animals have their own language as well.
That language is a part of our nature because it’s the matter of interacting with one another, not to feel more intelligent and higher than the rest. In Xu Bing’s Case Study of Transference, there is a picture of two pigs having intercourse, one with imprinted fake Chinese characters and the other with fake Latin words. The art in this piece is the fact that although animals don’t speak or talk like humans, doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t have a language. People forget that having a language is a form of interacting with one another, just how art allows us to communicate and make connections.
Bing’s art distinguishes the differences between nature and civilization because, besides the fake language, when people view the piece, they get embarrassed for seeing the pigs do something natural. He also mentioned that, “The pseudo languages helps us to imagine a universe beyond language,” which shows the contradiction in his artwork because Bing emphasized his piece of the meaning behind the things that are given a meaning, which shouldn’t be overthought so much. This relates to one of Koch’s poems, “Aesthetics of Feet”, stating “To move together/ Even when we’re apart” on how art goes against two different ideas (165).
For one, as simple as the poem is about feet, there comes a deeper significance to it. We don’t realize the contradiction behind it because we are too accustomed of seeing feet and knowing that its a function of our body that helps us walk. Feet work together to properly work. It helps us move from place to place. That may be the case, but there are many situations when a person can’t walk because they are paralyzed, had their leg amputated, or were born without feet, which opposing the idea of feet allowing us to move because people can still move without them.
We depreciate and appreciate feet, and believe that it functions to make us move as well as having the power to move without them. The art that plays with our perspective contradicts simple things as complicated ones, where in this case it was about feet. ?? The contradiction in art comes and goes. It is shown through people’s ways of thinking and how we use our language. Another way can be shown through music’s power in affecting people greatly or painfully. Music is universally expressed, the same way art is used as a language.
It has the power of controlling one’s experience and capturing the heights of a moment. Wilde mentions, “Thought and language are to the artist instrument of an art” which music serves to art because it contains both thought and language to create a song, as well as what the listeners incorporate to them (212). For instance, people might reminisce when listening to a song that brings them back to that time. Other times, which I have experienced, people might listen to a song for the first time and reminisce of an event that hasn’t yet been experienced because the music gives such a nostalgic feeling.
While these are similar feelings in different situations, other people might think that music is for fun and that there’s no truer meaning behind it. The point of music being around back fires to those who believe that music is meant to create connections and speak to us, when there are people who believe it was born for no reason which happened to make us very passionate about it. We get carried away with how much music can affect us and because of that, we contradict ourselves and art. A song can have lyrics that make no sense at all and people will try to find a way to understand them, when there really isn’t anything to look for.
They dig for something hasn’t even been buried. People don’t want to feel alone, which is why they try their best to understand something so others can understand them as well. For example, in Rey Chow’s Comrades: Almost A Love Story, music is the key element in the film. It contains the art of thought and language just how Wilde mentions. The film sets in China, where two mainlanders move to Hong Kong for a better life. A woman meets a man who is new to Hong Kong and ends up deciding to help him.
Knowing that they are both from mainland China, the woman begins to hum Teresa Tang’s “Tian Mi Mi”, and notices that the man starts to do so as well. That song helped bring two strangers together in an instant, rather than people who grew up together with a certain song. The woman and the man became comfortable with one another because the song showed how each one tied their identities to a stranger by sharing the same emotions through one song. In that case, music speaks for the strangers, accompanies their relationship, allows them to create connections, and exchange their own experiences with each other.
Although Teresa’s song, brought them together, there were times when the song captured rough moments which broke them apart. The art in music is that it brings bittersweet feelings. A reason to how art can contradict itself through music using Wilde’s idea of thought and language to be instruments for an artist. ?? Art keeps being expressed in various forms and keeps changing because of us. It starts to question why art can be such a contradiction. Again, Plato states, “You have been better and more fully educated than the rest and are better able to play your part in both types of life” explaining the result of art’s freedom (102).
The art of education lets people drown themselves in either open minds or ignorance. This traces back to the purpose of art having a purpose or not, because with education, people can be exposed to so little or too much. The freedom of education and learning new material ends up limiting the knowledge we take in because there are situations where one stays sane or become insane. Further explained, in the Allegory, the prisoners who are in the cave are restricted from learning and experiencing the truth, while the prisoner who was released was exposed to reality and overwhelming truth.
As the prisoners keep thinking the world as darkness and shadows, the one who was let out begins to see the light and makes things clearer than before. Since the freed prisoner was introduced to new things so suddenly, he has the freedom to do anything, which is something scary because that prisoner might not be sure of what to do since they were accustomed to the life inside the cave. This is similar to how having an open mind can lead to problems because one can change to what’s revealed to them, like conspiracy theories, documentaries, books, etc.
It is compared to the contradiction art carries because we are free to do whatever we want with endless options, but at the same time we are limited to that freedom. ?? Art doesn’t necessarily have to fall on one side, whether born for the right or wrong reason. It really depends on ourselves to decide what art’s true intention is. In some cases art’s definition is that it has no meaning, while most of the time it’s used to make people’s lives better It doesn’t need to have a specific purpose because it’s something that shouldn’t be forced to have a meaning.
Art can be our friend and our enemy. It doesn’t necessarily exist to teach us a lesson, or turn us into lunatics. This essay just goes to show how art or explaining its contradictions is a complicated thing, similar to art itself. I was probably finding a reason to give significance to the contradictions of art that it became confusing to deal, just how contradictions are confusing to begin with. In a simple form, art is a living contradiction.