1. Art as a means of conveying emotions (Tolstoy tradition)

"The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his senses another man's expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it."

— Leo Tolstoy, What Is Art? (1898)

In other words; emotions are both contagious and teach us something about ourselves and others. Art is a medium that helps us to grasp this.

Work by: Japemiro, title: "Maybe that's what grief looks like, when no one knows about it?" https://www.byrosenberg.art/services-9

I estetikkens historie finnes en sterk tradisjon som definerer kunst som formidling av følelser. Den mest kjente representanten er Leo Tolstoj, som argumenterte for at kunstens kjerne ligger i at et menneske overfører sin indre følelsesmessige erfaring til et annet menneske gjennom et uttrykk. 

Art thus becomes a form of communication where the audience can experience the same feeling that the artist himself had when the work was created.

According to this approach, art is successful when it creates a shareable emotional experience, regardless of technique, style, or ideals of beauty.

This perspective is often used in humanistic aesthetics because it explains why art is experienced as meaningful and universal across time and culture.

Work by: Japemiro, title: "I wouldn't have it on the wall at home" https://www.byrosenberg.art/services-9

This means:

A work is art when it actually touches others — regardless of who made it.

In the next post we will look at perspective no. 2. Art as interpretation of the world (Modernist tradition)

What is ART?

The question "What is art?"

What would you answer?

It's not that easy to give a good answer to that.

This is one of the oldest and most difficult questions in the history of human ideas — precisely because there is no single correct answer. There are many definitions given from different perspectives.

This is a question that has occupied me for many years. It is an incredibly fascinating topic because it also reflects different people's need to control the narrative.

Art is not just about expression, emotion and aesthetics - it also touches on people's need to shape, protect or control the narrative of the world. This happens on multiple levels, both individual, relational and societal. Art can both confirm and challenge such narratives, and that is precisely why it is experienced as universal, open and free. The moment one tries to place art in a fixed box, it slips away - and thereby reveals the limitations of the narrative that tries to hold it in place.

That said, it is very enriching and interesting to delve a little deeper into the different definitions or explanations from different perspectives - such as these seven:

1. Art as a communication of emotion (One of the oldest understandings)

2. Art as interpretation of the world (Modernist tradition)

3. Art as rupture, criticism or investigation (Contemporary art)

4. Art as a space for experience (Newer phenomenological understanding)

5. Art as fragment - and as whole (Psychology and aesthetics)

6. Art as care and regulation (Neuro aesthetics, one of the most modern fields of research)

7. The Open Definition of Art (Today's Most Used Theoretical Framework)

I will go into more depth on these, one by one, in the next few posts....

Salvador Dalì and Venus de Milo with drawers on their bodies

In Ekebergparken there was a sculpture made by Salvador Dali, it is Venus de Milo Aux Tiroirs, 1964. It is equipped with drawers that you can pull out, one in the forehead, several in the chest, in the stomach etc. It made me curious to find out what he might have meant by that and it led me into the surrealist universe of Salvador Dalí.. I understand why he often said: "I am surrealism"

He didn't just mean that he painted surrealistically - he meant that he lived surrealism. He made his own life a stage, and himself a work of art. During a lecture in London in 1936, he appeared in a heavy diving suit to symbolize that he was going to "dive into the human subconscious." He was about to suffocate and had to be rescued from his helmet.

He could also show up to a party with a baguette strapped to his head, a surreal gesture that elevated the banal to art.

In the 1960s, he was photographed several times in Paris with a live anteater on a leash. He liked to provoke the audience by doing the unexpected.

He used to say, "The difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."

Dali is known for his symbols such as melted bells, eggs, ants, crutches, elephants, and drawers that have become modern icons. He made surrealism accessible to the masses through his theatrical personality.

What kind of education did he have?

Yes, he began studying at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in 1922 and was expelled from the academy in 1926 for causing unrest. He is said to have stated that no teachers were qualified to judge him. That same year, he met Picasso in Paris, which strengthened his path towards modernism.

When I read about his upbringing, I was both sad and shocked. I am very fascinated by what shapes us humans to become who we are, and here may also be some answers to why Salvador Dalì became who he became...?

The story goes that he was born in 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia. He was named after his late brother who died shortly before he was born. His family told him that he was the reincarnation of his dead brother - an idea that left a deep mark on his self-understanding and later on in his art, where themes such as double identity and reflections often appeared.

So back to the Venus de Milo with the drawers, what do those drawers mean?

Even though Dalì's pictorial universe seems absurd, it is full of layers of meaning and here are explanations of the symbols he is known for:

• Melting clocks - the subjectivity of time, influenced by Einstein's theory of relativity and the dissolution of order in dreams.

• Elephants on razor-thin legs - the paradox between strength and fragility.

• Ants - decay, death and anxiety.

• Egg - life, hope and rebirth.

• Crutches - symbol of support and human weakness.

• Double images and reflections - often expressions of his feeling of being both himself and his deceased brother.

• Drawers on the body - hidden secrets of the psyche, inspired by Freud's ideas about the unconscious.