At one point in my life, I just concluded that maybe it’s only me who doesn’t believe in the conceptual arts thing, and I’m very okay remaining like that until, maybe, an angel from heaven comes and changes my mind. Like, how would you explain that a very fine drawing from a good artist would be priced lower than a zigzag drawing all because it’s said that the meaning of the zigzag drawing is more powerful? The craziest of them all is that a renowned artist would just put three dots on paper with a pen, then connect the dots in a contour-like manner, and that drawing would be valued at $2 billion. How??? How is that possible? What has the world turned into?

Is there a bad art?

Yes, there is!

During my days in secondary school, we did a subject called Fine Art. I doubt this subject is still taught in schools today. We learned the basics of art, its various parts, and we also practically learned how to draw. We would be given assignments or classwork to draw objects in front of us, add the shading indicating the reflection of light, and all that. We would draw and submit for marking, and at the end, some people would get flogged for drawing “nonsense” or out-of-box drawings. I mean, they didn’t draw anything reasonable at all, and our teacher would get very angry. Those were bad drawings.

But then, the world we live in has a way of justifying things and making them appear totally different, and this brings me again to the topic of conceptual art. Those bad drawings are now what sell today at high prices because of how famous the artist is and the story they attach to the drawing. I don’t like that!

Those bad drawings that are now rated as the best drawings in our world today can only be valuable to me if they have magical contents in them. This reminds me of one of my favourite TV series, The Legend of the Seeker. In it, an artist could draw anything—either a house, humans, or the ocean—and they would become real if one truly felt it. Yes, people could walk into the drawing and live their lives there in the magical realm of the artwork.

“Oh, arts are measured by the message they’re passing and not by aesthetics.” Is that really it?

If that’s the case, why do artists bother to put aesthetics? As for me, I’m of the opinion that even though those artworks are meant to pass messages, aesthetics should still be taken into consideration when rating them in terms of bad or good.

Take a look at the artwork above. It’s not fine when it comes to standard, but it’s better than others when presented. So yes, there’s a need to rate an artwork based on its aesthetics also, and not just on the message it’s conveying.

Thanks for reading.

This is my entry to Week 188, Edition 02 of the Weekly Featured contest in Hive Learners Community

Image used is mine