This text includes a creative exercise to explore why visual art is so powerful in certain situations and contexts. To aid such exploration, I will discuss three possible ways or lessons to zoom in on the aesthetic experience and its possible role in self-development. This text also aims to contribute to the richness and complexity of the formal study and appreciation of art.
Imagine you are in front of a cave right now. The cave feels dark and damp as soon as you step inside. You will need some illumination to get into the place. You may sometimes need to lower your body to move forward into the cave. Your heartbeat and your footsteps are the only things you can hear and identify. Suddenly, the cave’s walls and ceiling reveal a pattern of spots, lines, and figures. A few of them are instantly recognizable, while others are less so. You need to get close to the images before you can tell what they are.1
This short creative exercise will highlight the practice of making images and items with no practical purpose that dates back thousands of years. The exercise’s goal was to transport you to Vallon-Pont-d’Arc, France, to explore the paintings in the Chauvet Cave, which date from 34,000 to 32,000 BCE and are among the oldest known.2 When the experts began to analyze the pictures, it became necessary to rethink previous knowledge about Stone Age paintings and style evolution. These images hold enough secrets to keep specialists and the general public curious about the meaning and use of such work, which makes them wonder why they are made like this? What was their purpose? I suggest in this text to explore these questions from a self-developmental perspective, which helps us to connect with our senses, memory, and capacity for cognitive growth through art appreciation.
A sensory yet cognitive experience
Visual artists use many different elements to get their point across, such as certain styles, shapes, compositions, and even the materials they have on hand at the time. Painters also have the option of using color and line to convey meaning. It’s possible to gain insight by considering also the textures and words contained in the artwork. Pictorial conventions often say more about the cultural background of the creator than words.
All the resources mentioned, assembled to a greater or lesser degree, trigger a response in the viewer, an aesthetic response3 that goes from awe and surprise to anger and despair. That’s how some pieces tie invisible threads between our thoughts, emotions, and bodily reactions with the sensorial possibilities contained in artwork.4 The purpose of art here can be understood as a way to identify how to use “our minds and emotions, but [that we] have trouble with.”5 Art then acts as a tool for perceiving the world and integrating internal and external experiences. In an ideal scenario, it might lead to improved awareness and comprehension of proper feelings repertoire that serves as a solid foundation for emotional regulation.6
In summary, experiencing art can teach us to recognize what happens inside us when we get an emotional response or become triggered. Here, we are talking about a higher process that can lead to self-awareness,7 one of the first steps toward dealing with these emotions and feelings. After becoming aware, it is possible to freely explore the emotions without acting on them, becoming curious about them, and viewing them as something outside ourselves, almost as if we were looking at the emotions as a work of art.
Bringing historical episodes together
Pliny the Elder, a Roman historian, recounts the story of a young couple who were deeply in love but had to split up. In response, the woman chose to sketch the outline of her lover’s shadow. Out of fear of loss, she drew a line outside a tomb with the tip of a burning stick. She wanted something to remember him by when he was gone. She wanted to capture his essence.8
Following this idea, artists, photographers, and sculptors, among others, are exceptional at identifying what is worth and what we must preserve. When we come into contact with a work of art and recall our aesthetic experience, we begin to remember. It could be a motive, a color, or a monument, or maybe an entire building that gives us a sense of identity and belonging.9 Art contemplation can be a meditative exercise that makes us stop and stimulates introspection on others and our human condition.10
As experts in the field of visual art, art historians today work with images and objects that cross the time dimension. Images can help us to be aware of the evolution of ideas depicted in the devices. Nowadays, experts in history and other disciplines are also attempting to address other questions about why these tangible images and pieces were created and why they appear the way they do. In a poetic sense, they are, in a way, making a memory exercise, attempting to represent the past, make it available in the present11, and generate meaningful knowledge for the future.
To summarize, as ideas, we are neither immutable nor absolute.12 On the contrary, we are in temporary experiments of evolving and becoming. Self-reflection about our lives allows us to be more in tune with ourselves while also connecting with others.13 We, like artists, can use art to make sense of the living experience of being human.
Resembling ideas and states from a different domain
A piece of art can depict a wide range of possibilities and withstand various readings and interpretations. Sometimes the artist’s intentions do not necessarily align with the viewers’ expectations. Art can address something abstract and concrete14, universal and personal simultaneously. In this “sophisticated accumulation of experiences”15, we can stretch out our preconceptions about ourselves and the world we live in. Artwork not only encourages us to enjoy ourselves but also to examine our own guarded and uneasy emotions. Some masterpieces also encourage us to embrace the uncertainty of trying to connect with them. Here we are talking about when we didn’t get the picture16 yet. Recognizing where we are in our understanding process can give us a guide that can assist us in diving into the unknown. And one becomes more present.
In this article, I discussed three lessons from art that we can learn and use as a development tool for self-awareness, self-reflection, and presence under certain conditions. Being aware of the ability of images to mediate our process for identifying, reflecting, and transforming information from our aesthetic experience can help us navigate the complexities of human life and develop a more sophisticated approach to ourselves and others. When we perform the processes described above, such as when viewing art, we zoom in and out on things hoping that a closer look will reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary.
Noter
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It is possible to see a reproduction of the cave in 3D here: https://g.co/kgs/6eaVew
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Helen Gardner and Fred S. Kleiner, Gardner’s Art through the Ages. A global history (Massachusset: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2020), 23.
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Gardner and Kleiner, Gardner’s Art through the Ages,1.
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Caroline A. Jones, ed., Sensorium: Embodied Experience,Technology, and Contemporary Art (Massachussets: First MIT Press edition, 2006), 19.
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Alain De Botton and John Armstrong, Art as Therapy (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2013), 5.
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Anne Torhild Klomstén and Camilla Fikse, Relasjoner, tanker og følelser i skolen. Samskapt læring knyttet til fagfornyelsen (Oslo: Cappele Damm AS, 2021), 79-80.
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Thomas Jordan, “Self-awareness, meta-awareness and the witness self,” accessed October 30, 2022, http://www.perspectus.se/tjordan/
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De Botton and Armstrong, Art as Therapy, 10.
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Susie Hodge, How Art can Change your Life (London: Thames & Hudson Inc., 2022), 128.
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Hodge, How Art, 114.
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W.J.T., Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005), xiv -xv.
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Umberto Eco, Historia de la belleza (Barcelona: Random House Mondadori, S.A., 2010), 14.
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Hodge, How Art, 97.
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Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?, xvii.
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De Botton and Armstrong, Art as Therapy, 65.
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Mitchell, What Do Pictures Want?, xiv.