Belle Photos

An artist is a mirror. How is an artist a mirror? Artists are the existential finishing points of their society.

Basically, as a society develops, it starts to make conclusions about life based on implicit sets of values. There is a spectrum in all societies: on one side you can put society’s values, and on the other side you can put the artist. In effect, as the society starts to make decisions about life, they start to form a pattern of decisions. They like this type of food, but not that type of food; they enjoy this style of music, but not that style of music; they wear these types of clothes, but not those types of clothes.

Where do these conclusions come from? The conclusions come from their own values. The values are simply value, or weight, given to certain decisions. When the people in the society have a choice between two decisions, they will choose the decision with the most value, or with the most weight. And so, with each decision made, the line of all those decisions becomes clearer. As people use these values to make decisions in life, the set of all these decisions form a ‘culture’, or unified system of decisions.

That’s great, but where does the artist fit in? The artist, as I mentioned above, is at the other end of the spectrum. First, the society has been given certain values, then with each of these values being used by people, a system or set of decisions are made about life. The artist is at the tip top of this line of decisions. It’s almost like an iceberg in the ocean; you only see the tip top of the iceberg, and the 90-95% of the iceberg is underneath the surface. Similarly, when an artist creates work in reality, you are only seeing the tip of the values that are there. You’re only seeing the tip top of what is. What you don’t see are all the values and decisions that are implicitly there, underneath the surface.

Basically, without her knowing it, when the artist creates art, she does so with all of her society’s values there in her mind. And as she paints the canvas, she is ultimately putting those values into reality. Art is the tangible expression of the particular values within a given society. Art is value. And so, without her realizing it, she brings life to the values all around her and within her. And so, when you are looking at a particular painting or work of art, you are looking at the end of a long line of values of a particular society. How does the society interpret reality? Which colors do they use and why? What are their primary values? All of these can be determined by the work of the artist.

That is why an artist is a mirror. When they work, the artist creates a canvas of values. These values all come from a particular society. It’s as if the artist is creating a mirror so the rest of society can see what it is that they themselves value. The artist, by their own creative expression, reveal the values. We then place the finest artwork on display; we honor the work, and in a sense, we are honoring ourselves. We value our own values, and so we value the artist’s work, because, essentially, when we look at the artwork, we are only looking at ourselves.