Today, while playing a few simple melodies on the guitar, I found myself wondering — what exactly is art made of?
I mean, my emotions aren’t necessarily weaker or duller than those of Mondrian or Lyokha Nikonov. And yet they created art, while I — didn’t.
I think the answer lies in this: great artists have the ability to hold their emotion in focus long enough to calibrate the right palette, chord, or line of text to match it. Cobain’s grunge was pain, numbed and smeared with heroin anesthesia. In theory, I can also take a strong feeling — good or bad — and try to find chords that reflect it or splash it onto a canvas. But there are two key differences:
- I don’t know how to transmit what’s in my head outward. The guitar or the brush don’t feel like extensions of my hand.
- And even if by some miracle I manage to express the emotion precisely, I can’t hold onto it long enough to keep the transmission going.
So in a way, art is about how well the author manages to share a feeling. And from that, it follows that you’re not required to love Malevich or Khlebnikov — their emotional transmission is often too meta for most people. You’re expected to first be thoroughly exhausted by all those Pushkins and Shishkins to even get what they’re reacting to.