Response to Josh

Does art need to express to the artist at all?

            Cognitive art or art intended to make people think would not be expressing the artist’s emotions. Artists could also create a work intending to communicate an emotion to an audience instead of trying to understand more about their own emotions. People can understand what anger means and aim to communicate it without figuring out the unique aspects of their own emotions. Art could also be intended for the artist to develop their skills or to make them think without it being based around emotion, although I think most art has an emotional component. An artist could also fully understand their emotion having previously expressed it and intend a work of art as a way to revisit it. They could use art to reflect on their past. I suppose art could also be made as an attempt to understand someone else emotionally rather than the artist trying to understand their own emotions. Art could also be used to reflect on the subconscious an emotional response might then be secondary. Someone could also make art for the sake of beauty or to challenge the current standards. Many reasons exist for creating art that do not have to contain an expressive component.

            For any artists out there, what do you think you are trying to do when you create art? Express, communicate, challenge, etc?