Silence Without Purpose

    Yesterday on the ninth I was sitting on the black bench in the drama lab wondering about post-modernist art, when a poster on the back wall. This was not one of our class and asked "what is art?" or something similar and noticed in the thought bubble it said "no art", either that or I misread it. Because I was thinking of Po-mo at the time I was reminded of a piece of postmodernist artwork in a picture of a museum. One particular one was an empty frame; no art in it and no art out, the frame itself was a vacant black, stoic boring frame. So I questioned, is that art, if nothing is visualised and no art is used. Well to answer that for myself I made my own little phrase of what no art is, "silence without purpose"- my words.

    To explain, silence without purpose is the lowest form of no art, where there is nothing to gain from nothing. It is a blank piece of paper that has no purpose no reason and through it people have nothing to gain from it. It is a train with people silent no one talking or noticing each other and the train dead still. It is a barren planet with no life and no water, no atmosphere, no reason for existing. Not to say it shouldn't exist but it does not stir emotion, the basis of my idea, emotion. That is what I see no art as, an empty husk that does not stir emotion at all and helps not one person.

      Silence without purpose is not the only form of no art; the other is noise without purpose. The noise does not only refer to sound but noise of the eyes, nose, touch and taste, but mostly eyes, ears and mind. But if there is a picture, and there is sound, is that not art?, not really no. this is the part of art I would call, sell-out art. This is music, theatre, literature, and visual artwork that the painter slew together to make money. Art that does not stir emotion does not serve purpose and is commonly directly influenced by common media. I see as most modern music as ones that just sound pretty but the lyrics are as shallow as the money it earns the artist, not saying this for all modern artists, but quite a few. Movies are also mostly sell-out art, the cowboy and alien movie, the expendables, many Michael bay movies with their explosions, all to impress and entice the audience to watch artless art. I’m not saying they are not art at all, many are just for fun anyway, but it is not art we should care about.

     There is a last part to this rant and that is "silence and noise with purpose" both which really sums up what think of art, anything with purpose. we can listen to music and hear lyrics that make us consider facts, greet someone or even look and smile at someone on that silent train, draw a picture on that paper that make you think or even draw what you are thinking about, like I am doing with this post. But it doesn't have to be a stimulus; it can be silence too, the silence after a heated discussion that leaves both sides silent, calming down and cooling down from anger, purpose being to not over do the argument. The silence at a funeral to give everyone a chance to silently consider how much this person meant to them and maybe even pray for their soul. The silence after a storm that leaves people happy it's gone and worried about the future. To return back to that frame I saw that was boring black and at the time symbolised things that I did not like about post-modernist art, I now see that, that frame is art it is silence with a purpose.