Mmmm…
Is this a question with an answer?
Performance art and music can make statements while entertaining us. They can take us away from the everyday to different worlds. Sometimes good and sometimes bad places. They can expose the truth and help mend hearts.
What about the visual arts like painting, sculpture, installations and digital art?
These forms of art can also be entertaining and make statements about life. Visual art is an interaction between the artist and the viewer of the work. It takes time and involves us in an entertaining activity.
So we pay to go to the movies/plays/musicals, and we buy tickets to concerts. When we purchase our tickets we don’t really know what type of experience we will have.
Visual artists must show the work they have laboured over and it is meant to be viewed or else it doesn’t live.
So next time you go to an exhibition of visual art please don’t expect to be wined and dined – you wouldn’t expect that from musicians and actors. You come willing to the exhibition anticipating a time of reflection and intrigue and this is what the artist and the gallery want you to have. They work hard as a team to bring the exhibition to you.
The purpose of art, in my eyes, is to entertain as a visual feast and make a statement but not necessarily at the same time.
Artist Michelle J Bowden 