A lot of people don’t “get” modern art, or for that matter abstract art of any sort. They look at a brilliant painting by Morris Lewis, for example, and see bands of paint spread across a canvas and say with no humility but a great deal of stupidity and superiority, “oh I could have done that at home with some cans of house paint!”, thus dismissing not only the genius of the painter, but casting doubts on anyones sanity who should have the effrontery to love modern art!
“..I could do that at home, with a set of water colors! or “My kid could have done that with finger paints!”
The point is: they didn’t do it, and even if they tried they never would achieve what truly gifted artists – artists willing to stretch the envelope of their experience- what great artists can achieve , even with a couple of cans of house paint.
I adore all art, visual, auditory, whatever….and of course poems….poetry to me is probably the purest art form there is….however, I could easily say that about painting and sculpture as well…I just adore art…true art, even the most meager attempt at it. Hell,I’d even give the arrogant idiot who says they hate all modern art a chance….if he would just take a chance himself and attempt to express his deepest feelings through a medium other than his own dense brain.
So, I maintain that art- especially visual painterly art – is pure experience because its not what you think the painting means, its all about how the collection of colors, choices, strokes, decisions, arrangement of forms, etc make you FEEL when your eyes first glance at the picture before you. IT IS ABOUT EXPERIENCE, NOT THOUGHT, NOT ANALYSIS…IT IS A PURELY SENSORY EXPERIENCE, not an intellectual one.
When a gust of fresh, sea-washed air brushes against your dry and sunburned face, you don’t think about it, you simply allow it to affect you, breathe it in and enjoy it, no thinking involved. Let it BE there for you. Open your arms and welcome it.
And so it is with a poem….that collection of words that may seem to make no sense sometimes on first reading….but those words are the chosen paints of the poet and those words, chosen by a gifted poet, paint pictures as truly as any brush stroke.
Poems are pieces of art….hang them on a wall, put them in a museum, and if you raise your level of acceptance to letting those words, that collection of language and image, float into your simple, breathed -in consciousness, they will, without doubt , have an effect on you, perhaps even make you feel something you didn’t know was there to feel.
Breath and sensory consciousness……..beautiful pillows on which to float away on the sea of pure experience.
And true experience needs no agreement. No vote. No nothing, but the art and your willing presence.