My creativity advent calendar 2024: Day 14.
Art and Truth.
“If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.” President John F Kennedy used these words in 1963, honouring the poet Robert Frost who died in January that year.
The idea that art is truth made me stop and think. Isn’t art largely made up? A representation, a fiction, an act of imagination, a flight of fancy?
Apparently, this is an argument that has been raging since Plato and Aristotle. One side of the argument is that artworks can’t inform or transmit truth because art is always an interpretation made by both the artist and the observer of the art. The other argument is that for centuries, art has been a source of information about how the world works, as in the picture of the Roman glass bowl, above.
It’s a subject could probably take a lifetime to study, and likely reach no conclusion so I’m stopping here, but if you have an opinion, let me know!
