What is Earth? Just a Rock, Without Art

What makes us Human? If someone ask me this question then I would answer it’s Art! Before going into much deeper, as all of know that humans are the only species in the earth who makes and appreciate Art. There is no other animals create any form of art. I want to start with an interesting quote. In an interview Timothée Chalamet said this^[1]

What is this earth? without art, just a rock!

I couldn’t agree more with this statement. I think without art life is worthless. I am not an ‘art’ guy but I know how to appreciate art and artist. Now what the heck is art? Nah I don’t want to go with textbook definitions and also there is no universal definitions of it^[2] For me art is a form of way to express ideas, emotions, thoughts in an abstract way or representative way. It can be done via many ways such as music (my favorite), poem, paintings, movies, novels and so forth.

What Makes Something Art?

My own personal theory is that art is considered something that is hard to mimic. No, this is not the only characteristics of art. Art is a combination of many factors—I think this is a important one. If I tell you to make something like “বিদ্রোহী” nobody won’t the able to create anything close to that. Many people can raise objection that nowadays AI can mass produce ‘arts’ such as paintings, novels, and even music; therefore we can’t say that art is something hard to mimic. There are some problems saying that Art. I am going to that point. Before that look at the following image. Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog is a painting by German Romanticist artist Caspar David Friedrich in 1818^[3]

This is I am not a painting expert so don’t take my words for granted. If you pay more attention to the above image you can see beyond a person is just top of a mountain. It’s true that some of the interpretations of arts is totally different what the actual artist most probably tried to convey. I think art is not created just for one interpretation of it. This is very very crucial I suppose. Art is not a religious scripture, so it doesn’t have to have a unified single meaning. This is the beauty of art, people can make their own meaning out of art! Art gives us the purpose to live, to be happy to be sad, to take pauses and ponder through the wonders that we have surrounding us. Without art life is dull, life is meaningless.

Functions of Arts

It is true that many of the art don’t have any utilitarian function. Some people criticize art stating it is useless but I think there approach is quite naive. Arts main purpose is to give tranquility of mind not just mere real life usage. There are so many evidence that art reduces depression and brings joy, with moderate-to-strong evidence across multiple meta-analyses.^[4]

Is Art Just good?

Through out history art is used for propaganda or false narrative. Below I think one of the most famous propaganda that spread thorough art.

Most of use have seen this heroic image of Nepoleon crossing the Alps but unfortunately this is a false representation of the reality. In reality he was riding a donkey, wearing a simple grey greatcoat not a magnificent cloak that is shown in the image. ^[5]

On the other had, bollywood movies they normalize misogyny and male gaze. Those who don’t know what is male gaze—make gaze is potraying women as sexual object for men’s pleasure. According to Wikipedia make gaze is ^[6]

In feminist theory, the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the world in the visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the heterosexual male viewer.

The problem is not about dress, it’s about the way it is shown. Some of the jokes and dialougues are just to please men where women are insulted and make them inferior. A whole separate writing can be done for the problems of bollywood movies but this is not the topic now. Don’t get me wrong there are many extraordinary movies in Bollywood but at the end, producers make those types of content they they know that will surely gain financial aspect. There are problems with art so does anything you can imagine about this world. We need to take the good aspects of art and avoid the wrong one.

The Difference Between AI and Human Art

At this time AI has become so advanced that it can write poem, novel, make music video, paintings. What is the difference AI and Human Art? The following image was uploaded to Bloomberg in 2028^[7]. I have intentionally chosen this image because this was the beginning of AI—it’s almost 7-8 years back. People can easily find way way better example than this.

If I ask someone about the art but little twist i am gonna name a famous artist name, then people gonna start praising this art. They will start digging and perhaps gonna start making some unknown and unique interpretations of this painting. But if we disclose that this is made by AI suddenly people gonna start disliking or won’t give that interest on that. Why?

I think the reason why art is valuable because we know another conscious being have created that. Most probably this provokes us to take that as an art and hate AI slop. If something like AI which don’t have any feelings (it’s still a debatable topic among scientists and philosophers about the consciousness of AI but this is not the topic) create an panting or a song we don’t count them as Art and I suppose we shouldn’t. It should be only bounded to humans, not a feelingless mechanical bot. Art makes us who are.

Then Why the Heck Art?

We human don’t just live, we have feelings and more importantly we want to share them with others. Yes we can share our ideas through language but there is a catch. Language is constrained by grammar, structure, social convention or that particular language have limitations to express ideas. On the contrary art is totally different. It gives us the way to express non-grammatical ways that are not tied to any specific language. Yes you follow rules to write poem or novels but you are not obliged. Here specially i am talking about visual arts.

Aesthetics

Art and aesthetics are deeply intertwined. I am not using the word aesthetics in normal sense. I am talking the branch of philosophy that studies beauty. ^[8] I am so ingress to the topic what makes something beautiful, what make something appealing. Don’t get me wrong I am a very unfashionable person but it I am very keen to know about this subject. Aesthetics is not only about facial or a person’s beauty. It is very broad and complicated topic. Is beauty objective or subject, is it shaped by society, if so how much, how much it vary from culture to culture. Those are some basic questions about aesthetics. If future perhaps I am gonna write a detailed writing about this. What I can say, it’s way more sophisticated that we think.

Beyond Art

We need to learn to appreciate Art. I am not saying that we must appreciate every form of art. No this is not a realistic approach because me too don’t like all of them and I don’t need to. Go into whatever you like—you have to autonomy to choose. Art is one of the most fascinating thing that we have and it gives use reason to live, reason to move forward, reason to love and being loved by others!