A blank canvas is nothin’ but boundless potential, and a piece of art is just the limit we place on that canvas.
Art has always been subjective, because it’s hard to quantify art. What is art? What makes good art?
What if you don’t agree with the art on a particular piece of canvas?
The true answer is it shouldn’t matter. At the end of the day its just a stained piece of paper – what everyone else thinks of it shouldn’t be important.
You hang that art on your wall, in your lounges and your hallways – or your bathroom if you’re that way inclined – because of what the art means to you. Maybe you found it at a low point in your life. Maybe it tells a story you can really empathise with. Maybe you just like the fuckin’ colours. The actual reason don’t matter because art is your choice and your taste.
When you have your own art gallery, filled with these exhibitions, it just allows you to pull at all the little strings of the various parts of your psyche you want to show to any visitors. Rather than tryin’ to find the one piece of art that sums you and your personality up, you can show different facets of you in each piece.
That’s the point of a gallery, it houses a collection of art that have a theme when taken in conjunction with each other.
So, what if the art is no longer for yourself? Well the theme falls flat, and the art loses all sense of meanin’. The gallery space becomes a vacuous room with no character, a pretence at what you want the world to see rather than what means anythin’ to you.
Jasper Redgrave has a gallery, but he does not understand the point of art, which is pretty fuckin’ stupid to say he’s supposed to be an artist. He curates his gatherin’ of art and displays it in his gallery, but he does not display it for himself, he displays it for others. He displays it for Jackson Cade, or Stubbins Doom, or any poor soul that he sucks in to his sordid game.
But those pieces of art aren’t for him, and there’s no sense of collection. There is no solid theme, and the art no longer has meaning. He pushes this idea that his art has true meaning because of the stakes involved. Life and death, blood and guts, but those stakes all come to nothin’ if they don’t mean anythin’ to the person who has to have them in their home every day.
And it’s all true, isn’t it Jasper? Your recent art is all for show, and lacks real emotion. And as an artist, if you can’t connect to your own art pieces, who the fuck else will?
It won’t be long until the Gallery falls, bereft of any visitors who care, and your art is worth nothin’ more than trash in the dumpster, linin’ the landfills of Arcadia rather than the walls of your hallowed space.
And Art without purpose is just an insane man’s doodlin’.