Communicating through Art (Arri's post)

The truth in any type of art, be it a painting, music, literature, dance or football, will always be a controversial topic. I do not believe that artists have a special "responsibility" to convey the truth because, as Himanshi stated in her previous post, the idea of what truth is is another controversial issue all on its own. Therefore, the idea of what an absolute truth is will vary according to the perceptions of people, and what they think truth is or isn't. Also, as mentioned in the article "Art and Truth", from the extract by Douglas Morgan, trying to dissect an artwork to find some sort of knowledge or truth from it completely takes away the meaning the artist put into his work. What I think artists try do is try to express what they feel at a particular moment in their lives through their art and try to make their audience, whoever is experiencing their art, feel the exact same way. An abstract artist may be painting a particular scenery, that when looked upon by someone else seems to be nothing like the scenery in front of the artist, just random blobs of colour. However, what the artist is doing is capturing the atmosphere of the scenery, how s/he felt when they looked at a particular area, and try to inspire those same feelings in the audience through the painting.


The question that needs to addressed first in order to fully respond to whether there is truth in art or not, is what kind of truth are we talking about? The general idea of truth is very ambiguous, because we all have different interpretations of what truth is. That moment of inner ecstasy when enjoying any of the forms of art which people enjoy, the thrill of experiencing that art and being a part of it, can lead people to a certain truth, maybe about themselves, maybe about something else in their lives. Perhaps there is no "truth" found in those moments of art experience either, because the way people feel with certain kinds of art cannot be expressed in words. It is something intangible, fragile, and elusive that we cannot tie down with our logical thinking, and therefore will always be an issue of perception and a topic of controversy.