[People] want to be spoon-fed. They need “art porridge” so that they can swallow it easily, without effort. People do not understand one another, so how is it possible for them to fathom the world?
—Javad Mirjavad
For several nights I have been adrift on the world wide web, picking up strong currents of interest and letting them take me to where they meet another current, then another, and another. No, I don’t get a lot of sleep. However, it’s a pretty good bet I would not have run into Javad any other way. His art alone would not have made me stay at the site I visited but I found meaning in his words. To tell the truth, I don’t even remember the link that led me to the site about him. I believe I was searching for a poem about Leonardo da Vinci and his search for the human soul – but that’s another story (I just wanted to mention it to sound scholarly).
Javad’s concept was on the mark – but I think it goes far deeper than a bowl of porridge. The majority of people I see wouldn’t even take the time to microwave a batch of “art porridge”. That would involve getting out the bowl, the porridge, the milk, doing some mixing, and figuring out how long to nuke it for one’s personal art tastes. Much much simpler to drive on down to McArtdonalds and get a Happy Art Meal to go. They fix it their way, you know what to expect, and you gobble it down. You’re sated, you belch, you go back home and watch Cops. Perhaps I am being a bit facetious but if they hung the paintings on the outside of the museums so people could just drive by and look, I’d bet there would be a lot more “art lovers”. The refrigerator magnet business would probably take off like a rocket! Monet pinning up “Scribble in crayon at age 2.”
As a race, we’re too busy flipping each other off on the highway or blowing each other up for differences in opinion. Who’s got time to study the subtleties of this art thing? Can’t we just listen to the radio and watch the movie of the week – or hey, what about those Lifetime Movies for Women? I’ve got TiVo all set up for A&E’s bio of Jeff Foxworthy – surely that has to count for a couple art points. Okay, okay, facetious again.
One thing that I am getting at – or trudging knee deep in muck towards, depending on your viewpoint – is that people gravitate more and more toward the instant gratification, at the expense of the more time consuming appreciation and, more importantly, understanding of a material. The former requires little more than a passive viewer. The latter requires a person to interact and/or experience a material, to think about it, discover it’s background, predict it’s future. In paintings, music, or writing, so many people walk away with just the surface experience. It was a pretty picture, nice tune, or a good story – The Mona Lisa, Mozart Symphony, or Moby Dick. Dig deeper, look at the impact, the social relevance, the statements that were made. What of the Mona Lisa’s subtle smile? Mozart’s depression? Moby Dick’s symbolism? If it ain’t on the test, forgot about it! If it is, grab the Cliff’s Notes!
How many dimensions, how many intricasies, does the human soul contain? What of the mystery of life? We may have to wait for the MTV special report to find out.