the curse of subjectivity

and how to break it.

“Impression, Soleil Levant”, Claude Monet (1872)

It’s the 1860s in France. Four art students under the academic-art painter Charles Gleyre realize that the current art scene does not suit them. They want to paint landscapes and still life over history and religion.

The year is 1872. Claude Monet, one of those four students, paints a very unique piece and calls it “Impression, Soleil Levant”.

Louis Leroy, another painter, critiques this piece in an article named “the Exhibition of the Impressionists”, and calls it a sketch at most.

So, the art movement of Impressionism was born.

The four students - Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille, pioneered an art movement, broke it free from the restrictive clutches of their society and academia, to pursue what their standards of aesthetics in art were. These standards have resonated with many of us over the centuries.

Why did these four students decide to make art that was completely different and definitely opposed in a society that chased a perfection of its own?

Why was something, that was so real and so perfect for Monet, “a mere sketch” to Leroy? Why did Monet risk harsh criticism only to paint over thousand art pieces of a style that would never be appreciated in the art scene he was living in?

Here’s why - Art is inaccessible. Layers upon layers of languages, time, and context separate us from viewing it with the love that the artist poured in it. At the end, each of these layers form an iron wall in front of art, and it’s called subjectivity.

And if subjectivity is a treacherous path on the edge of a cliff you’re running on, perfection is the very hungry tiger on your tail, chasing you. All you can do is keep running.

subjectivity

/sʌbdʒɛkˈtɪvɪti/

noun

the quality of being based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. "he is the first to acknowledge the subjectivity of memories"

the quality of existing in someone's mind rather than the external world. "the subjectivity of human perception"

A human soul is not an individual unit of existence. It is built as a mosaic from our memories, and our subjective experience of them. What is good to me, might be bad for you. From the day our mind starts building memories, we experience events, craft them into memories. Sometimes we even learn from them. Memories shape us, and subjectivity shapes memory.

Here’s a hypothetical situation: You don’t know the first thing about art. You’re an extremely busy human, an officer of some big shot company, if you will. A newspaper posts an ad: “Stand in front of a painting for six hours, and explain to the judges why you think it was made. Win $1 million.”

Your company, in an attempt to enhance goodwill, promises to send you and donate the money you win to charity. You accept, out of the fear of disobeying your seniors.

In front of you stands this painting.

“Number 17”, Jackson Pollock (1949)

With no knowledge of and interest for art, disinterest sets in quickly. You stare at this artwork and feel irritation and anger. You have no idea what this piece is, and you’re going to walk out of here tired, lost, angry, and without the million dollars.

Here’s another situation: you found a new love in your darkest days - art. You read and read about the world’s art history, and one day, you see the exact challenge printed in the newspaper.

You go and stand in front of the Pollock. You adore it, and you take your time to explain how beautifully Pollock revolutionized the rejection of representation in art to craft this masterpiece with action painting.

You win the million dollars.

Subjectivity is a curse. It is an all-pervasive curse that builds an environment for you. Consider your soul to be a bank’s locker room. Each locker represents a thing around you. Your subjective experiences fill in these lockers with whatever it can pick up from your environment. This is why you might have never been pregnant, but you know it must hurt. Your subjective experience, from hearing about pregnancy from others, told you this.

There is a locker for art somewhere in your locker room. What do you find if you look inside? Here is what I had found in mine - I thought that enjoying art was a hobby for rich crowds, was a career for rich kids, and a philanthropy scam for billionaires.

Now, I associate everything I do with the art I enjoy, and I’m not a rich kid or a billionaire. All I had to do was empty the locker of art, and fill it with new subjective experiences. My new experiences, which I built after sifting through art pieces, reading about the movements. Free from any preconceptions and notions.

One thing is clear. To bask in the excellence of true art, one must leave subjectivity and its ensuing notions at the door before stepping in.

Maybe at this point, you would ask, why did I write all this to you?

Dear reader, our perceptions, our subjectivity makes us harsh on the world around us, and ourselves. The first poem I wrote, I hated it because it just didn’t seem like the poems I had read before. Instead of never writing again, I just tried to read more and more poems that resembled mine in any form and shape, felt inspired, and wrote ahead.

If Monet had stopped after his first impressionist painting out of fear, you and I would have never had the chance to love the Water Lilies. Maybe your emotions are simply waiting for you to paint them on a canvas, sketch them out on a paper, or write them out in words. Maybe art isn’t the rich kid career, but simply the human’s escape?

I say goodbye to you with this - be kind to yourself. If you want to learn something new, don’t let any notion stop you from trying it. If you want to quit something, quit it. If you want to create art, do it. Write, paint, sing and dance. Life is too short for us to not create and love art. Break the curse of subjectivity, and live.

Life is too short for us to not romanticize it, and what better way to fall in love with life, than to fall in love with art that immortalizes it?

Find me on Twitter, and tell your friends about it, thank you. See you next time.