Teresa Cochran | Artist to Artist, In the Know, Reflection & Growth | January 27, 2020
How & Why to Build Your Art Thinking Muscles, Part 3 of 4 This is the 3rd part of a blog series on How & Why to Build Your Art Thinking Muscles. Building your capacity for “art thinking” is generally a lot of fun. It can be transformational. There are four basic things you need to do to build up the part of your brain that understands the arts. “I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned.” Reflect on what you are learning. Many of your experiences on this journey will be enlightening, pleasurable, stimulating and fun. You will learn a lot. You will get better at understanding the visual communication that surrounds us every day. You will not like every work of art you experience. You may find entire types or genres distasteful. Much like your taste for vegetables, your taste in art is likely to evolve during your lifetime. You will champion what some artists are doing with their art, and you will not agree with the goals or ideas of others. You will find compatriots who think similarly to you about art, who may have insights you find delightful, and you’ll hear opinions you disagree with vehemently. All of that is to be expected. People disagree about all sorts of things. “The most important function of art and science is to awaken the cosmic religious feeling and keep it alive.” You will become more confident about: This blog post was drawn from Engage Art’s free Choose Your Own Art-venture eCourse and Workbook.
~ Yayoi Kusama, 1929
Art appreciation is cumulative. Much like you learned addition, then subtraction, then multiplication, then division, you’ll also learn art appreciation one level of complexity at a time, each building on what came before.
~ Dr. Albert Einstein