How To Travel Through The Art World
Tags: Drawing, Travel, Creativity, Travel Tips, Art

How To Travel Through The Art World

Photo by Erik Odiin on Unsplash

If you ask someone where you should go to see art, many people will give you the names of the major art cities and art museums. These are certainly interesting places, but there is so much more to discover what you miss if you only hike on the beaten path.

Art exists almost everywhere where people live. The culture or the region is irrelevant because people have always had the habit of expressing themselves and leaving something for posterity. So it’s always a good idea to position yourself wider and have an open mind for new things. Of course, this applies not only to art but generally in life.

If you discover more, you are more likely to live a more fulfilling life. Because always remember, you only have a certain time on the planet, which you should use to discover it to the fullest.

It is everywhere

As already mentioned, in almost every city in the world, in every mountain village or on every isolated island where people live, there are works of art to be discovered. Most of these are known only to the locals. This is simply due to the ignorance of the tourists or even the presence of the large museums and art collections, which, because of their importance, cover everything else with a large shadow. You miss a lot if you don’t devote yourself to this undiscovered art. Because you can learn a lot about the people who made them.

Besides, you get out of familiar patterns of thought. Western societies in particular often have the habit of wanting to apply their history to the whole world. But it doesn’t work that way. If you drive to an island in the Pacific or to one of the villages in the middle of Africa, all the knowledge you have gained about the Baroque or the Renaissance, for example, will help you nothing.

Of course, you can put it in the known history and make comparisons, but that’s about it. You have to rediscover the term art in these places and have to think about how superficial all of our rules of proportion etc. are because these mostly only apply to the works of art that were produced in Western societies.

If you visit museums in foreign countries, you can not only see completely new works of art but also train your own eyes and thinking, because you are confronted with things that do not correspond to your world view. As a result, art no longer becomes an abstract concept, but rather a discussion of one’s personality.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

Where you can’t go

There are works of art that are made so that nobody can see them. There are some in Antarctica or on inaccessible mountain peaks, in caves and on lonely islands. But why are people doing this?

The idea is that this art requires a very special way of thinking. Art is usually created for a viewer. This is the normal sender-receiver principle. When an artist creates a work of art in a remote location, the artist usually starts a discussion with himself. But there is also a completely different topic. Namely, the idea of ​​beautifying the world.

Of course, it is always a matter of opinion whether an object makes the world more beautiful, but this process is a fundamentally human habit. Humans have always been interested in making this foreign world their home, and if an artist takes on this task, it can also happen that a single statue stands in the eternal ice of Antarctica. You don’t have to understand that and you probably won’t see the art, but you have to accept it because there are good reasons for the artist to make such a work of art.

What we lost

This is a very emotional topic because art can be unknown due to banal things, or it can be unknown because someone made sure that this art remains unknown. Banal things are, for example, that an artist did not ensure during his lifetime that his works of art outlast the times, the weather, and other influences, or that the artist was simply unknown during his lifetime. This increases the chances that nothing of his work will remain in the future. It is nice when a collector finds an exhibit of such an artist in a flea market or the grandparents’ attic.

The piece will then hardly have a large monetary value, but it can be of enormous value for the finder. So it is always a good idea to check in the closets or cellars of grandparents or parents to see if you can find something that seems interesting or magically attractive. In this way, you can find works of art that will accompany you throughout your life.

It is worse when art becomes unknown because someone has tried to hide it or even make it disappear entirely. Time and again it happened in the history of mankind that rulers or regimes destroyed undesirable art and instead used art to clarify their claims to power, thereby replacing old works of art. Not only is that very sad, but it is also an incredible encroachment on human memory. Usually, however, something like this does not prevail in the long term and if a few pieces of the repressed art survive and the regime is replaced, it can often happen that the old works are brought back and the lost works of art are given more importance.

When approaching such works of art, one should be humble, as these can be the last vestiges of an entire generation of artists who may have lived a terrible life. You notice that there is also this side of the art world that you should take a look at.