Final Entry: A Summary of the Semester

What an odd, exciting, confusing, bitterwseet and dare I say colorful journey this has been. Throughout my course, and through the entries in this blog, I have gained a host of valuable knowledge about Western art that has only enticed my desire to learn a lot more. Though it is next to impossible to sum up centuries worth of art and an entire semester's worth of knowledge in one journal entry, I will at least attempt to summarize my own persepctives with one question: What isn't art?

Sure the question seems like philosophical tripe to some, but to me it is the single most important thing I have learned through this course. Everything in our world, everything in our lives and in our consciousness is art. From the role models we look up to, to the monuments we build, in the characters we paint on easels and through the songs that we sing, our whole life is just one big sculpture that we never stop constructing. The meaning of art has changed over time; from the first statue of David to the Colloseum in Rome, from the Pillars of Madrid to the Louvre in Paris, art has been transient in reflecting the values and ideologies of different people from different places in different times. But if there is one truly miraculous thing art does, it is that it unites us  by allowing us to share with the world everything we are feeling without using a single word. A newborn baby cannot distinguish one person from another but he/she can respond to colors and sounds. Little children in pre-school learn to finger paint before they have learned their alphabet. From the moment we enter the world to the moment we leave, we are using the artist within us to paint our own unique picture of the world. Art allows people to build cities through aqueducts, it allows people to commemorate god through the pillars in a cathedral, it allows the artists to express a hundred different ideas, thoughts and emotions on one sole easel or through one lone structure. Art is what allows us to understand the spiritual essence of our ancestors long after they have gone. No one can define what is the "right" type of art. No one can put a stamp on what an individual feels about the world. One man's Dali is another person's Monet; they may not have the same techniques or the same ideologies, but they are both considered artists. To some people art may speak volumes, to others it is devoid of meaning. But neither matters, because art is inherently a trade which does not need labels to justify itself. Because it has no borders, art has no limits.

If I were to sum the essence of art in one sentence, I would use the words of one Oscar Wilde, who said:      "Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand  different ways."