Art appreciation

 I am incompetent to “speak” about “how to appreciate art.

Readers who are looking for that ( how to appreciate art) can save their time, by refusing to read any further 🙏

What has this ability to do with us? ( appreciating an art?). This is what I tried to look at!

I observed, when I looked at various peepals( desi slang for “people”).

I saw, I beheld, I observed, and then I perceived a few oddities.

1.Not everybody was alike, in appreciating a magnificent “view” of huge mountain range, suddenly in front of us, when we get down from a bus, halted briefly to cool its engine, at the top of a circuitous road climbing up.

2.Not all of them respond with equal measure of emotional expression to a musical concert ( especially those carnatic/ hindustani classical ones, where the vocalist keeps repeating the same line for too-long. A few become impatient within, enough to throw a facial-expression declaring “when is he going to stop this stupid-repetition, and get to the next line of the lyrics… 😡?”)

3)not all of my classmates managed to continue looking at a 4” tall carved statue at ajanta caves (1965 or so, my school days, as a kid. It was “ex-cursion” not just a-picNic trip! ). Only when that guide told us, “ 3 generations are said to have worked on this tiny statue. To reach its level of beauty” a few among them “tried” to turn back and decided to “invest” a couple of seconds-more!😜 to see “really? What's so great about it?” वाला look! 

4)despite being an outsider to a “gang(adda) of kids” elder by 3 years to me, I got “admitted” into them, only-when I remarked about the subtleties of a work of art ( hindi movies, and deeper diagnosis about the direction, dialogue delivery, camera angles, editing etc). Just 3 of them were very keen about the subtler aspects of art displayed in the “commercial” hit-movies. Those few were able to “appreciate” few talents in even-a-commercially FLOP-MOVIE like “Bhuvan Shome”  https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhuvan_Shome&ved=2ahUKEwiy29Xwgr2KAxUcSmwGHY8sAaoQFnoECCAQAQ&sqi=2&usg=AOvVaw1MH-vEpSI_TKGHMyHCFrU_  despite its national-awards! In fact “award movies” were not commercial-hits 😳😶😶😶 a glaringly exampull/example for me as “lessons to learn” in spirituality 😜😜😜

5)not all were similarly “moved” during a Yoga-class/program. The feedbacks were emotionally touching from a few only. The people who managed to pursue, needed a further fine-tuning in me, to “learn” about the “why? What inspired/motivated/persuaded them to intensify their practices? “ well, it was my journey of next 7 years of hyper-active volunteering to provide back-up-support to freshers, aggregating some 5000 people spread over 8 to 10 years. Obviously,  I did collect “gems” of learning, when my failure rate was 99.97% in motivating a “spiritual pursuit” sustainably🙏🙏🙏

My observation : art appreciation might need some-kind of emotional sensitivity in a human being! ( a computer does not “sense” an added device like a mouse, pen-drive, printer etc, attached to it. Here, the sensitivity is restricted to ONLY a logical compatibility in its binary programming 🙏. A.I. robots can “sense” logic well, not an emotion.  If a “canvas” looks like a random spray of different colour-paints, even humans who are logically-talented might say “spoiled with spray of colors. Where is the painting in it called “art”?”)

Art-appreciation courses ( even brief crash-courses, ) do not seem to take off, really…… despite several “start ups” sprouting in Bharat mahan,  during the last decade! Probably, emotional sensitivity needs to be nurtured, nourished and taught STRUCTURALLY in our modern educaShun/education imparting buildings 😰🙏

Shall I display my audacity here( in quoting  a example?)?  Bharat is known as a spiritual destination.  “Fine-arts”, ….  counting  64 of them as “lalit kalaa) are also unique to  Bharat 😜.

Connection?   A demonstrable example! Penny-counting and miserly merchant burst-into a legendary composer of devotional music, all of a sudden, when spirituality dawned into him, during a torrential downpour on a mountain top,  in the darkness of midnight ( so goes the story) fine arts peaked, when spirituality spewed its molten lava of a sleeping Volcano in him, suddenly….🤣… melting the logical-limitations of miserable-miserliness in him till first half of his lifetime. ( apologies for quoting such an example 😅 🙏… sage PURANDARA daasaa. His songs are a material for life-time worth research into one part of desi music. Or, just sing them as a bhajan and soak in its spiritual-contents … your choice😜)

Artistically challenged,  yours,

psm(23 dec 2024)