Boxes and the Compartmentalization of Art

Bette Midler recently made headlines for tweeting a picture of three girls at a museum distracted by their phones instead of admiring the art. Yet the context in which we view art tends to be just as compartmentalized and distracting as a phone. Today on the podcast, we look at varying visions of art in cultural context — from the paleolithic caves to Indian temples to modern performance art — and move towards a conclusion that art, perhaps, isn’t just in the object. It’s in the state and quality of interaction between subject and object. Art, in its traditional context, reinforces the animate force of life, and is a gateway for an experience of this animate force. And if the observers aren’t delivered into a state of rapture by the art, perhaps it’s not a reflection on them, but on the entire context in which we view and compartmentalize art.

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