Cover image: Frederic Edwin Church, The Heart of the Andes, 1859. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. (Public Domain).
Here are twelve reasons to give art a try.
- Art can be beautiful. But it can also be not beautiful, if you’re more into that. Either way, it elevates the ordinary and unusual alike, bringing meaning to even the most mundane of subjects.
- Art makes you think. The most powerful works of art, not to mention the stories behind them, inspire deep and meaningful thoughts. They make you consider things you wouldn’t ordinarily. And because great art generally has many layers of possible meaning, it rewards careful attention and study over time.
- Art lets you see things in a different way. Look at four paintings of a flower to discover four different ways of seeing a flower. There are so many different ways to experience the same thing, and art can give you new perspectives on things you see and encounter in everyday life.
- Art creates emotions. Joy, fear, love, nostalgia, pride, and peace are just a few of the many emotions art can make you feel.
- Art conveys other people’s experiences. Walking in someone else’s shoes has nothing on looking at an artwork they created. It literally and metaphorically lets you see the world through other people’s eyes. Enjoying a work of art can also make you feel connected to something bigger than you and introduces you to ideas and worldviews other than your own.
- Art lets you time travel. Look at an old artwork, and it’s almost like journeying back to times long gone by. Artworks are tangible links with the past, and that past can be illuminating to us today.
- Art helps you escape. Art isn’t always happy, but it’s often a good diversion from problems, stress, and daily life. Studies suggest that art viewing is good for our overall mental health.
- Art is subject to opinion. You might not agree with the textbooks, but your experience with artwork is your own and completely valid. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. There are almost always multiple level of meaning and many ways to interpret them.
- Art rewards you for paying attention, and it’s really not that hard. To uncover artwork’s secrets, look at it long and hard. Background information can help, but the most important thing to do is look. It’s that simple – no translation necessary.
- Art has something for everyone. With so many different artists, styles, and subjects out there, there’s artwork to suit every person, mood, and situation.
- Art can’t judge you or get offended. You don’t have to worry about getting it wrong, looking dumb, or feeling awkward around an artwork you don’t like or understand. Art doesn’t know or care what you think of it. That makes art viewing lower stakes than other cultural experiences, where you might be afraid of offending someone, doing the wrong thing, or looking ignorant.
- Art is accessible. For most of us, it’s far easier to go to a museum and see art from another culture than it is to travel to that place in person or attend a cultural or religious event of that tradition. Art can even connect us to long-ago cultures that don’t exist at all anymore.1
Learn to think like an art historian.
Notes
- This point was made by Professor Grant Hardy of the University of North Carolina Asheville in the first lecture of his Great Courses series Sacred Texts of the World. Professor Hardy was talking about why studying world scriptures is a great way to understand world religions, but I felt that the point is also applicable to artworks. ↩︎
