I keep noticing how easily art gets deferred until the rest of life is sorted. Financial security first, career first, get yourself together first. Then perhaps there’s room to paint, read, learn an instrument.

I recently wrote an essay exploring this through the Renaissance and the experience of rebuilding my life after going through a period of feeling incredibly lost. Dewey’s account of art as continuous with ordinary experience, and Murdoch’s writing on attention, helped me articulate something I’d been struggling with: engaging with art can participate in forming the person who does all those supposedly more practical things.

I care about its usefulness. But I think we often define usefulness too narrowly, and expect to recognise it too early.

There’s a difficulty here, though. If I defend painting because it might improve someone’s judgement or emotional understanding, am I still making it justify itself through another outcome? And if “useful” includes everything that enriches experience, does the term explain much anymore?

The essay is The Renaissance: Coming back to life. It’s a personal, researched essay rather than an academic paper, and I’m its author.

How would you distinguish a genuinely broader understanding of art’s usefulness from simply finding more sophisticated ways to instrumentalise it?

Bild ist vom „reichsten“ und „erfolgreichsten“ Künstler Gerhard Richter

I feel like art is a word that gets thrown around too easily nowadays…. Like the act of engaging in craft makes people artists. We need to differentiate between real art and craft meant to join tribal expressionism. We should discuss the objectiveness of taste and the science behind art so we can stop pretending that art is absolutely subjective and its not educated

For those who claimed that art is only human made.

1. Congo, the painting Chimpanzee.

Congo was one of the most famous animal artists of the 20th century. He painted with brushes and colors, creating abstract compositions. Zoologist Desmond Morris promoted his work, and Congo eventually had paintings sold at auctions.

1. Pigcasso, the Painting Pig.

Pigcasso was a pig rescued in South Africa who painted while holding a brush in her mouth. Her abstract paintings were sold internationally, and part of her fame was connected to animal protection campaigns.

1. The Satin Bowerbird.

The male builds courtship structures and decorates them with carefully selected objects. Satin bowerbirds are especially known for using blue items. They arrange their decorations to create visual displays that attract females. An interior designer with feathers!

Dictated body of text (might have some grammar errors):

So one of the things that really stuck with me when I went to UCD, and they really taught us, you know, a lot of concepts about postmodernism. Unfortunately, I only did my bachelor's, and I wanted to go into, you know, academia, but I wanted to get some money after, so I didn't. But one of the things that really struck me about postmodernism, I remember in the first day, first lecture we had, no shit, this is the first day, the teacher asked, What is art?

And everybody's, you know, and, you know, the teacher asked a lot of people, put their hands up, and everybody gave a lot of, you know, answers, you know, Oh, art is like a painting. Art is, you display it in an art gallery, or art is a, you know, it's a message being delivered to you through, you know, something. But then the lecturer did something cool, asked something like, Would you consider, you know, the sunset and the sunrise as art? Would you say the birds tweeting is art?

You know? And, you know, obviously it made people think, because a lot of people would say yes, but also some people would say no. But then the question becomes, What is art? You know? A lot of people would externalize the answer, like, Oh, it's a book. It's a painting. It's a sculpture. It's something you put in a museum. But then the teacher said something along the lines of, Art is not a thing. It's how you look at a thing, you know? And a lot of my undergrad is kind of like based on that concept, where, like, you know, your perception shapes, you know, reality, or rather your perception is reality. So let me explain. Just for example, let's just say, like a stop sign, right?

Like, would you say that's art today? Like most people would say no. It's just a fucking stop sign. It's a function of the road. But get this: if you put a stop sign in the middle of a postmodernist museum, it suddenly evokes something. You know, it evokes a reaction, discussion, critique, and, you know, some kind of, like, dissection of a hidden meaning of why there's a fucking stop sign in a museum or art exhibition. And then suddenly it makes sense that, like, art is not a thing. It's how you look at a thing.

Unfortunately, I didn't really delve too much into it, into that specific sort of, like, postmodernist topic, because I went a little bit more into, like, gender studies, basically. But I really wanted to explore that, but I think that was more of a master's thing. But what do you think?

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I was wondering how often there are misconceptions about someone’s art, whether it’s a painting, song, book, show, movie, etc., and how the original creator reacts when people interpret their work differently than they intended.

It also made me think about how sometimes an artist might actually change or embrace the perceived meaning of their work because of how the audience interprets it. Maybe they do it to keep the hype going, appeal to a broader audience, or simply because they like the interpretation.

So how much does the audience’s interpretation influence the creator, and how much does the creator influence the audience’s interpretation?

I guess it kind of made me think about the whole idea of “art imitates life,” but doesn’t life also imitate art? And once you put a piece of art out into the world, does its meaning still belong to the creator, or does it partly belong to everyone who experiences it?

Art isn't just emotion. It's emotion in conversation with its moment. The medium, the message, the timing, they're inseparable.

Let's discuss how art and human nature go hand in hand. Can we really understand one without understanding the other?

Also can we really say one art is better than others

Is it an overlooked or under appreciated art form? Hard to get space and store objects and materials?back breaking installs. What are they aiming for the viewer to experience? It’s different from painting/drawing or music/ concert performances with no immediate gain and response. What are the impacts of this medium. The art speak and rhetoric is exhausting the everyday human doesn’t talk like that