Art -- in the widest sense of painting, music, writing and whatever all else -- is from its inception (literally from its inception where the sperm consumes the egg and the egg consumes the sperm) an intimate matter between artist and the appreciator of that art. It is divinely personal. It is glorious and brooks neither doubt nor improvement. Any interloper -- as for example someone who can and will and insists on 'explaining' art -- is, in the moment of intimacy, apostate ... a bum feasting on the carrion left behind; a weakling filled with kiss-ass sincerity. A fire-breathing dragon within me labels it "disgusting."
The intimacy is not to suggest that all art realizes its intimate inception all the time. Sometimes the buttons simply do not get pressed, no matter how many interlopers insist that this or that is "great art." But when that moment of intimacy is realized and the delicious drowning occurs ... please do not speak or try to speak.
The artist makes his or her mark and that mark is made sperm-to-egg fashion ... although the event is not something that can be divided into something as trite as "sperm" and "egg." This is the beginning of art. Shazzam! Personal, person to person ... and yet beyond person. If it were not, then all bits of art would go directly from the easel or keyboard into the hands of the academics whose carrion-prone profession gives them leave to expatiate and assert their 'caring' hearts.
The middle men are too infrequently called out. Even in my own mind, the need to explain and find meaning jibbers and jabbers and denudes the art in front of my nose of its life-giving intimacy.
Middle men. Akkkkkkk!
None of this is to dismiss a discussion or two of the context in which art may arise or the culture that may have spawned it. But when it comes to middle men, the tendency to tip over into believing that somehow such discussions are on a par with art's consuming intimacy is really out of bounds, however popular it may be.
There are things more important than egotism.
Nobody gets to craftsman who made their chair. But then few can afford such intimate possessions these days. Unless labeled, who knows what continent our food comes from.
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