Music Mosaic - Rhapsody in Blue

 

Rhapsody in Blue - George Gershwin 

As an amateur sketch artist and photographer, I aspire to convey emotion in my images. Because this is my artistic goal, I identify most with the expressionist movement of visual art, which, according to theorist Chris Baldick, seeks to “evoke an emotional effect, and transmit personal moods and ideas” (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms). I believe that passion is integral to the very definition of art through both the artist’s liberal expression of his or her emotions and the piece’s stimulation of the audience’s emotions. Here, the identification of the emotion conveyed does not matter as much as does its intensity. For example, my creation of the drawing in the center of my mosaic was intended to express my own absurd angst and emotional confusion as I struggled through addiction and mental illness. However, the piece might move the viewer with feelings of fear or frustration, which they might apply to their own past or present struggles. Even if the artist’s and audience’s emotional interpretations of a piece are incongruent, the art may still be successful if it conveys emotion with intensity. As we discussed in class, artistic expression allows one to communicate with others on a deeper level than is possible through verbal explanation alone. However trite, the cliché holds true: a picture is worth a thousand words. 

Ultimately, art is about telling a story. Every member of the human family possesses a unique and valuable story to contribute, which is informed by his or her upbringing, moral values and past or present suffering and joy. In Peter Forbes’s lecture The Power of Story in an Age of Consequence, he speaks of a new story that should be told in our generation. He asserts that “This new story is in a language everyone can understand... This story is as much about listening as it is about speaking” (6). Telling one’s story through various artistic mediums permits one to communicate with others so that they can identify with one’s experiences regardless of contrasting lifestyles. By transcending the social, political and economic barriers that may exist between us, expression allows us to focus less upon what makes us different, and more upon what makes us similar.