What Does It Mean For An Artwork To Communicate?

An Artist friend once said "Art to me is a language,  a means of communication. Which also means that any work that doesn't communicate is not art. And then the greater the communicative power, the greater the art. The lesser the communicative power, the lesser the art."

So what does it mean for an Artwork to communicate?

Have you seen Barnett Newman's plain blue painting that sold for $43.8 million?

Can you say it actually communicated it's purpose for creation to its buyer?

Let me answer that by sharing a story I just heard from an Artist.. Ogochukwu Ejiofor a.k.a Bullet Art


"Well interpretation can be very understanding .......for example when I was in school, we were given a theme to work on, "we were here".... While everyone was busy painting and having different ideas and trying to meet up with deadline, one particular guy just made sure that his canvas was very white. We laughed at him that he is lazy and will get the lecturers wrath.... on the day of submission, before the lecturer walked in, he took the smallest point brush he could find and painted five brown dots, quite faintly at the edge of the canvas...we thought he was weird. When it was his turn to explain his work, we were eagerly awaiting the wrath....but the guy simply said....we were here, but just left some minutes ago, hence the empty canvas. He told the lecturer that if he had walked in earlier, he just must have met them! The dots were the mark they made when they left. And believe me when I say that that was the best work for the lecturer, in as much as we felt cheated, I couldn't but accept the fact that it made sense. So people have deep meaning for such works...."

Just like God is the one that does the harvesting. When a harvest is ripe, mere men don't see it but with the help of the Holy Spirit, we know who is the ripe harvest. That applies to Art, to some it can be plain but then to others who connects with the Artist (with the openness of one's inner man), there's always so much meaning in a simple dot on a white canvas. That's why when coming for Art Exhibitions, we should always seek to understand beyond what the ordinary eyes can see.

TGIF... Do have a Happy Weekend!