Consider it Vertovian of me, but I believe the purpose of art is to do nothing more than imitate or, perhaps, emulate life. This isn’t to say that a realist painting is any more valuable than an impressionist or even experimental work of art. When it comes down to it even works such as Matisse’s blue nudes attempt to display and tell us something about life.
However, it becomes rather conflicting because art will never actually be able to succeed in imitating life, but that’s part of why I continue to strive to do it. That failure teaches us, or at the very least me, about life more than any other great accomplishment could. We learn from our failures and not our successes. I wrote down a memory the other day that will possibly express all of what I’m trying to say more clearly than a strict statement could. It was a memory I had as a child when I felt like God.
My father showed me how to create “infinity” by placing two mirrors across from one another. Of course my mother ruined it by pointing out God created everything that let us have the mirrors at all. But for a little bit I felt like the creator of something. That’s when I started making art. That’s when I devoted my life to trying to feel like God again. And that’s when I chose to pursue a life of intentional failure.