An artist uses art to express their feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. The expression of ones life experience through art isn’t for people to stand around and question or agree or disagree with. That is very personal to the artist and they are sharing that very personal viewpoint. What art makes you feel is personal to you and you’re entitled to your response to that art. But to have the audacity to criticize someone else’s personal expression of their own life experience is gross and offensive.
Being ignorant of other people’s reality isn’t an excuse for this kind of offensiveness. Any persons art … be it a poem or a painting or a film or whatever … any expression of someone else’s lived experience or viewpoint through their own lens is their own. Having the privilege of being able to bear witness to it is something to be celebrated and appreciated and taken in. If someone else’s TRUTH of their own life makes you uncomfortable, then you should examine that for yourself.
Being able to say: “Well I think this artist’s viewpoint of their own life experience is wrong and I disagree” takes a magnanimous amount of assholery and idiocy. You should think deep about that kind of nonsense if that kind of stuff comes out of your mouth.
So if I am a painter … and I paint a canvas that reflects my experience as a queer, Black person … and it looks dark or violent or negative … that is an expression of MY life and MY experience. For you to stand in front of it and say “Well, I think that’s bullshit.” is like … who ARE you? Seriously … if you’re someone who thinks like this … go back into whatever cave you crawled out of and take your audacity and ignorance with you.
Someone sharing their pain, their wonder, their beauty, their weakness, their viewpoints with you … is a privilege you should learn to respect and appreciate. Someone sharing their most personal and painful truths and perspectives is a gift that deserves to be observed, honored, and appreciated.
You can’t agree or disagree with perspectives on a life that isn’t your own. It’s not for you to do.
Learn to shut up and get out of the way.
Learn to listen and to seek understanding of others.
Experiences like this really stand to remind me how far gone humanity is and help to further explain exactly how we have come to this place in history with such little understanding of each other and such ignorance of reality. People continue to astound me in their levels of cluelessness and (often undeserved) levels of privilege … It’s a sad state of things. It really is … when you can’t even appreciate ART or someone else’s bare, vulnerable, honest expression without criticizing it.
What someone else’s art turns you into or evokes from you is very telling about who you are not so deep down … your response to someone else’s art or expression via art speaks immediately to who you are as a person …
Pay attention to that transference.
Pay attention to that truth.
That’s you.
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