Art is Not Your Fragile F***ing Flower
“I just think poetry is so beautiful and profound.”
“Virginia Woolf’s depiction of women is so amazing and beautifully done.”
“Poetry just speaks to me more.”
It was cold, and I was already grumpy. I had only 30 minutes before work, I still hadn’t started my paper due in five days, and I was being followed by an art bro.
In a completely unsubtle attempt to hit on me, my art bro classmate spent the five minutes it took for me to walk to my car attempting to convince me of his reverence for poetry after learning that I'm a poet. He told me that poetry is just so much more interesting than fiction; that he didn't feel successful in a day unless he had written something that resonated with him. He referenced Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, which we were discussing in class, and asked me what was going on “in the waves of my mind,” swearing that Woolf was “one of the most profound writers ever”; that “she has such an intricate style.” He asked if I had been feeling “particularly connected” with what I had been writing recently — as if art is so far above us that even its creator cannot get close to it.
I was so shocked by this performance that I actually laughed. I had only ever heard about people this pretentious in movies; had been told second-hand stories of such interactions from a friend of a friend. And for as many annoying art bro interactions I'd had — like the stranger in Marfa, TX who tried to impress my friends and I with his love of “art for sure” and infatuation with the “intricate” lobby floor tiles — I had never in real life heard anyone treat art so untouchable, godly, and distant.
Certainly, art has the potential and power to be profound. The best is often so, as well as beautiful and stunning and every other vague synonym you can think of. I cry every time I watch Interstellar; Samia’s song, “Pool,” gave me a spiritual awakening; I genuinely think the Demon Slayer manga series is one of the most empathetic contemporary stories. But I also giggle at the low-quality panels in Demon Slayer; I make fun of the way Michael Caine’s character in Interstellar only ever repeats the first half of Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”; I roll my eyes at the idea of “needing men” that Samia sings about in “Pool.” Just as art can be thoughtful, pretty, and clean, it can be equally silly, common, and dirty. By handling art only with the gloved hands of oversensitivity, we lose touch with the universal nature of every poem, painting, photo, and film.
As the age-old saying goes, the world is not black and white — and neither is art. “Good” and “bad” exist at the same time within the same thing; “high quality” and “low quality” are two sides of the same coin. You can have a good day and a bad day all within the same 24 hours, or you can have a day that means nothing at all. Art, in the same way, is versatile. As prolific and pretty as Jane Austen’s writing is, it's also quite witty, sometimes petulant, and oftentimes sarcastic. Olivia Rodrigo’s teen rage anthem, “brutal,” is rich with references to underlying societal issues, but angsty and loud, and at times, Rodrigo sounds whiny and unsure. The Dada artists of the early 20th century movement were notorious for creating art that purposefully meant nothing, as they attributed the logic and aestheticism of art to modern capitalism, which they hated. And for those who think this is undermining the true importance or meaning of a work, would Austen’s novels, Rodrigo’s songs, or the Dada artists’ work be so well-loved if these so-called “common” sides weren’t prominent?
What good is art that you cannot touch or even reach? Art is not inherently profound, and treating it as so — putting it up on a high, shiny pedestal — makes it lose its purpose (or lack thereof) and creates a culture of cold consumers of art. As a world so characterized by its ability to entertain, emotionally move, and shift perspectives, what good is art if you cannot connect with it?
More than anything, art brings us closer to something: emotions, knowledge, memories, cultures, people, desires. Although many works of art ask for and may even require sensitivity and thoughtfulness when consuming and analyzing it, always doing so with every work will inevitably put distance between you and whatever art piece you are engaging with.
Without connection, art becomes just as the words it is described as are: vague and barren. While a film or poem or painting may be technically great (synonyms: genius, stunning, perfect, extraordinary), that is all it will be if you do not take a step forward and initiate play. Laugh and cry with the characters in a novel, try to think like the detective who’s solving the murder in a film, remember your first love when listening to a Taylor Swift song — these are valuable and necessary interactions to have with art. Without them, art is empty and sits alone on its pedestal of “lovely — just so moving,” without the interaction to prove it so. This abandonment and disconnect makes art meaningless, not in the way Dada art is meaningless, but devoid of its ability to move us from one emotional or intellectual point to another.
Though so much art has survived and thrived due to capitalist interest (a completely different and much more complex issue to talk about), we are still watching, reading, viewing, and interacting with art made centuries ago not because of its greatness or its empty beauty, but because we see ourselves in it.
Though I recognized its quality but hated Virginia Woolf’s writing, I actually loved To the Lighthouse — for completely opposite reasons from my art bro classmate. I saw myself in Lily Briscoe, the spinster artist who could never seem to finish her paintings; I felt a lump in my throat as I read about Mr. Ramsay’s guilt after losing his wife. I hated the act of reading To the Lighthouse, but I enjoyed engaging with its story and characters. If I had the attitude of my art bro classmate, I definitely would have thrown my copy of the book away as soon as I was done writing my essay on it. Technical greatness is not enough to carry art through time, generations, and homes, but real emotional connection is.
Laugh at fart joke poems, stand too close to the paintings in the art gallery (just don’t touch!), sketch low quality cats and post them on Instagram, make jokes about the Mona Lisa, find genius in kids movies. Don’t be gentle with art; don’t treat it like it’s god, or as if it’s a piece of old glass. Treat it with respect when it calls for it, look at it from history’s perspective and your own perspective, and find any and every way to connect with it. And definitely don’t suck up to art to hit on a pretty poet.