The Better With Art “Rules”

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• Rule #1

Good news… There are no rules! No rules to enjoying art and looking at things. One of the reasons I started Better With Art is to share my enjoyment of art with others and to hopefully strip away some of the notions that people carry about art. Notions like:   “It’s pretentious… I don’t know anything about it… It’s weird… I wouldn’t know where to start.” Better With Art seeks to change those and any others you might have.

So this is meant to be FUN! Enriching! Challenging at times… Maybe confusing… but in a good way. Whether you a viewer or a maker of art, I invite you to jump in and enjoy the posts and set aside your artistic prejudices for a while. One of my favorite authors, Lin Yutang, wrote in The Importance of Living (1937):

Art is both creation and recreation. Of the two sides, I think art as recreation or as sheer play of the human spirit is more important. … I think the spirit of true are can become more general and permeate society only when a lot of people are enjoying art as a pastime…

He’s talking primarily about making art, but I think the same applies to looking… it’s all enjoying art, taking part in the experience.

As a side note: Lin Yutang also has a nice chapter in that book on the importance of “Lying in Bed,” in which he states: “It is amazing how few people are conscious of the importance of the art of lying in bed.” Now how can you go wrong with that!

3 Responses to The Better With Art “Rules”

  1. I had never thought of art from this perspective! I usually gravitate towards stuff I find visually pleasing and other stuff I disregard. If in a museum, I feel obligated to read the formal written stuff alongside the piece. If in a coffee shop I notice and immediately judge as good or bad, then look at the price they hope to get for the piece. This idea of art as an experience offered as visual stimulus that can be fun makes me want to go back to the museum and give genres previously overlooked a new try. For me that museum is one of the best, the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri.

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