And so, a piece of art addresses an audience, which, in turn, is supposed to understand it. This means that the piece of art bears another duty and, hence, another definition: it is a message to be heard, understood and responded to. Which means, furthermore, that a true artwork appears, when the artist has something to say. Obviously, this is about something that touches the author personally. One could remind me that art-for-order or even art-for-hire does exist. Yes, it does, but that changes nothing. The artist's talent is to understand and empathize with what other people could and should really feel. Otherwise the outcome will not amount to real art.
People-To-Art Relations
So, a work of art is a message. Now, what happens on the audience's side? It is fact that we love, hate, feel compassion to, and are afraid of the heroes of a work. As we said already, that new world is a real one. It is unique, it is unusual, it is specific, it is virtual and it is real. We engage in this reality... if we allow ourselves, that is. And for those who don't, art simply doesn't exist. Despite the fact that you are free to engage and disengage with the world represented in a piece of art, when you are engaged, everything happening with its heroes touches you. In short, we develop real human-to-human relations with the heroes of the virtual worlds. The only difference here is the consequences. Remember how we have to sometimes convince ourselves that it is not real, when a movie becomes too chilling? Remember your tears when you listen to music, sometimes? Remember the deep feelings, the tempests of thoughts while reading? These are all very human feelings, aren't they? And these feelings are directed at and are invoked by those images of people, shaped by the artist, writer, signer, composer. . .
Interestingly enough, the same thing happens when it comes to real people and events we are not involved with directly. Often they become truly real if are "processed" by art. We discussed already, that information in a newspaper may pass unnoticed by the public. It is the art of journalism to make a real event truly real to us, to make something captivating out of a factual event so that the audience notices and accepts it as an important one, gets engaged in human-to-human relations with the characters of the article.
Personal vs. Consumer Attitude
Having said this, we can understand another dimension of individual relations with a work of art. Let's turn to our example again. Say, one day you discovered 'The Lord of the Rings'. You may have borrowed it from a friend or taken from a library, read and decided that you want this book on your shelf, so that you can read and re-read it, and talk to its heroes, and listen to them, and enjoy their adventures, and be afraid of their dangers, and discover new countless details, possibilities, beauties and challenges of that other world time and time again. Then you went to a bookstore and did not find it. Would you say to yourself something like "Well, there is no The Lord of the Rings here, so I can buy something else."
Albeit, the above attitude is possible, this wouldn't be normal here. If you want The Lord of the Rings, then you want The Lord of the Rings. It is personal by nature! It is not the same when you are going to buy a car. In the latter case, you need something to drive. Even if you want a very certain car, it can be substituted. The Lord of the Rings - cannot. Another book will never be the same to you. In the exactly way that some person will never be the same to you as a loved one.
I consider the last point to be extremely important. Let's deliberate a few more examples. One can say something like:
"I need something to eat," or
"I need something to drive," or
"I'd like something to read," or
"I want to marry," or
"I need to talk to somebody."
You can also say something, like:
"I want rack of lamb, Irish style," or
"I want a blue Cadillac," or
"I need The Lord of the rings," or
"I love Miriam and want to marry her," or
"I miss Tom and want to talk to him."
What is the difference between the two groups? The first one contains indifferent, or better to say, impersonal statements which represent, generally speaking, the "consumer attitude." The second one consists of personal statements, which represent a humane, passionate attitude.
Let's pay close attention to the first group. The "consumer attitude" in some of these statements should be taken with a grain of salt. Even when you just want to marry, you normally foresee individual human-to-human relations, so even though this wish is expressed in general terms, it is not necessarily a consumer one. The same story happens with your wish to talk to somebody. This normally implies someone able to listen to you, understand, probably help in some personal, caring way. Further, if you want to read something, normally you anticipate human-to-human like relations with a book heroes and this is exactly what attracts you.
Now, the personal statements in the second group also go cum grana salis. When you say: "I want to drive a blue Cadillac", it is personalization of a functional thing, which has no soul. Human-to-human like relationship with a car is not in the nature of the car. Nothing in it is supposed to derive love, or hatred, or any other purely human feeling. It is only functional, powerful, comfortable and so forth.
To sum it up, a human can develop a personal attitude toward any thing and may treat other human beings like consumer goods (an extreme case, for instance, is slavery). The question is, "what is natural here?" When you wanted to read The Lord of the Rings it was personal by nature, like if you wanted to meet another person. . . And this is not an irrelevant or surprising analogy at all.
If a work of art is another real world, with its own heroes, events and laws, and if this other world talks to your soul, then you cannot treat it like food to consume or even a tool to use. It is different in principle, in nature. You do feel a kind of personal engagement, much like one with other people. This human-to-human face of an artwork makes it exceptionally important for us, as human beings, individuals and as a society, as whole.
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