Why Art is so Difficult to Understand

Art is a strange subject to discuss. It is difficult to think about art seriously and intellectually, especially since it is so damn ambiguous. It comes in a variety of forms and serves multiple purposes, making it hard for an individual to even begin to wrap his head around the topic. Furthermore, the need to understand art is rapidly dissolving; as technology is approaching its utmost efficiency and is forcing humanity to keep up with this fast-paced progression, the time for meditative contemplation seems kind of silly.

Within a month of being in school, I have encountered the painfully trite questions "What is art? What is its purpose?" all too many times for me to bother remembering. These questions were presented by my ostensibly philosophical teachers, all of whom posed the question with such a look of serious intent on their faces that I couldn't help but roll my eyes.

Even more tritely, nearly all of the students' responses were derivations of "Art can't be defined! It's subjective, so it just depends on the beholder. Voila! I have solved this thousand-year-old conundrum. Just give me an A+ and get me out of here."

Despite their obvious inanity, I must concede to my classmates' dismissive attitude towards "finding the truth about 'Art'", especially when it is brought up with such a scholarly and pedantic haughtiness. However, I also dislike the childish disrespect from my peers towards something that requires a very specific and special mindset in order to understand - a mindset too unfeasibly inconceivable for beginners, for lack of a better word. (My classmates perhaps have pondered the 'profound' nature of art for 15 minutes before hearing the school bell ring and rushing to the bathroom to relieve themselves of something that they have been holding in for the past 30 minutes.)

That special mindset - embedded only in very special individuals - may be the reason for that godforsaken barrier between an ordinary person and his access to the entire universe of wonderful, exciting, slightly depressing, all-encompassing Art.

Have I crossed the barrier yet? I find myself in the process of burrowing through it. I have played classical music for the past 15 years of my life. Well, I say, "played," but the truth is that I was trained / forced against my will / grudgingly accepted / obligated / wrestled into learning classical music. For a great majority of my life (which was basically every day of those last 15 years), I had questioned the point of learning classical music. I hated playing the violin. Nothing was fun. Nobody explained the purpose of music to me.

It was 15 years of training, 15 years of hearing that I'm doing something sort of right or doing something irrevocably wrong, 15 years of being unable to pinpoint what I've been doing right and doing wrong, 15 years of facing overly critical musicians, 15 years of just painful painful drudgery. I thought art was supposed to be fun. It was only supposed to be entertainment. Who takes art that seriously when it's such a frivolous hobby? Once somebody steps out of the artsy universe of their mind, once somebody leaves a concert hall or a theatre stage or an art exhibition - once they step back into reality, nothing really has happened; nothing has changed. So what's with all this fuss?

I doubt that my questioning this inconclusive topic for 15 years has brought me any closer to the truth than my quasi-cogitative teachers. But I have realized one thing about art.

Skill is required. It's the years of training and devotion and meticulousness; it is the metaphorical journey towards perfection for something deeply intimate and significant. The best artists have immense skill, which can be easily overlooked.

The reason why sports are so popular with the masses is because it is easy to appreciate the athletes. Physical exertion is something every individual experiences, making it a relatable activity. Sports fans can easily spot a natural athlete, and some are even able to say, “This athlete is so skilled and graceful, he moves like a dancer.”

However, many recipients of the arts (such as middle-aged men sleeping through five hours of opera, or fidgety children internally dying through an agonizing violin recital, or impatient teenagers dragging their feet throughout a school field trip at an art gallery) do not realize the amount of skill and intellect required in art.

What many people forget – or never realize – is that art is actually academic. It is as academic as mathematics, writing, and science. There are many people who get the wrong impression that art is simply made by overly emotional, sentimental, mawkish lunatics who just get “feelings” and wish to express those so-called “feelings”. Indeed, there are many artists who appear this way, and there are many phonies who call themselves artists because of this. But that isn't what art is about. To understand art, one must appreciate how it works. Thus, simply asking, “What is art? And what is its purpose?” to an elitist group of IB students in a dark room stifled with pretentiousness is pretty useless. It takes years – an entire lifetime sometimes isn’t even enough – of undergoing the pain, the ecstasy, or the spirituality of experiencing art in order to even begin getting a glimpse of what it means or what its purpose is or any of those other questions.

Art, therefore, is perfectly isolated: only those who make art can understand it, and only those who understand the power of art can truly create it.