Art With Bre: What is Art - Really Though?

Breanna Castaneda

Professor Long

ARTH 102.01

15 September 2013

What is Art?

When defining art, one must remember that art stands for a multitude of concepts. There’s the concept that art is the visual stimulation one receives, looking at a painting or a drawing, sculpture or listening to music. Or that art is anything beautiful, a painting’s intricacy, a drawing’s delicacy, or both combined with fame and hype to make it great and beautiful. And then there’s the idea that art is simply any one person’s form of expression, open to and dependent on the viewer’s interpretation of the piece. The reality of defining art lies within finding the meaning behind the art. It’s taking the time to look at and understand a piece, why the artist chose those colors, what emotion the viewer receives even if it was not what the artist had intended- but all things and more must be considered when looking at a piece in which the artist has incorporated not only skill and technique and talent, but sheer soul and raw emotion.

Frida Kahlo is one of the most famed Mexican artists not only for her generation but also for her political role along side her husband Diego Rivera. But she is most revered today for her personal works. And they were just that, personal, they expressed the pain and torture she felt daily as she was trapped in a crippled and failing body. Her self-portraits reflect the vibrancy and beauty of color; but by utilizing herself as the subject, she was able to contrast between something beautiful and something that is reflective of her life and her experiences, literally her world as she sees. She painted the human experience in itself and in turn her viewers are subjected to the same. In the human experience one must consider the piece itself and the emotions invoked within themselves to discover what the piece means to them. I look at Cracked Spine and I see the raw darkness that some can’t escape. In The Two Fridas I empathize with her based on my own human experiences, my own tragedy and pain. Hers describes the pain and suffering that is so descriptive of a life that was just unforgiving, her sadness liters the canvas.

Essentially art is the human experience; it is delving into thoughts and emotions that need expression, whether they’re thoughts of pain, tragedy, death, or morbidity, or they’re excitement, happiness, and love. It’s all in the perception of what the eye sees, the soul feels, and how it connects to the life of another, and in my opinion- that’s the beauty of art.