Great Art and the Mental Etch-a-Sketch
For a long time now, I've considered the effect great art has on me ("great art" meaning art that I think is great). Most of the time, I walk around with a lot of noise in my mind: reminders of things I need to do and remember, random memories of people, places, and things, pangs of guilt over imagined slights, surges of rage about various things, what have you. If you could represent it on an Etch-a-Sketch, it would look something like this:
But when I experience great art -- writing, visual art, music, etc. -- the effect is as though someone turned that knob that clears the whole screen:
And I feel at once recentered, calmed, and tranquilized. Also, that's how I know the art is great. I can understand how great art might make some other people feel energized and stimulated, and I guess it does that for me to, but in a subtle way. What effect does great art have on you?
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Great art
At first, I didn't think it was possible to give a single answer to this question. Different art has different purposes, and it has different effects on me. Even the same art will have different effects at different times.
But that observation is so obvious that it's not very useful. More useful would be a single point that all great art, whatever its differences, has in common.
And indeed, that's what this Etch-a-Sketch would look like for me: blank, like the second one, except for a single point. Because, in one way or another, that's what all great art does for me. It allows me to focus on some point--on an idea, on a feeling, on an issue, on something that I either would have misunderstood or would have missed altogether in the jumble of everyday ideas and everyday life.
Two Cultures