Art as escapism vs. art as expression

13 September 2018

The types of art available in the world is so diverse and practically unlimited. Although I have my niches, I've always tried to appreciate many forms of art. They are all pieces of one big, breathtaking picture. However, I do feel that art is becoming increasingly as a means of escape, rather than a form of expression. With technology advancing ever so rapidly in the 21st century, the ability to bring to life fictional worlds, becomes a reality. Many new films and games - both media containing art forms - have shown off stunning and realistic graphics, really bringing to life our favourite childhood heroes and fantasy worlds. They allow us to explore an almost completely separate world to our own, they allow us to escape. Visual art has followed a similar trend, with people enthusiastically creating fanart as well as their own fantasy or sci-fi utopias. I believe that all types of art have their place in the world, I do not purely favour one over the other.

However, I am growing more concerned about balance. I feel that the types of art that are highly expressive and reflect an existing inner or outer reality has taken a backseat, that there is an imbalance in terms of the types of art used as escapism vs. the types of art used as expression. The types of art that go viral and stay trending do not seem to be those that were created to convey a strong message or feeling. I feel that favouring escapism over expression brings with the danger of being disconnected from ourselves. Expression in art is what allows us to truly embrace our depths and parts of us that sometimes words even fail to express. It allows us to evoke and inspire feelings in others, it allows humanity to share different, as well as similar experiences. It connects and informs us. I feel that expressive art is especially important in the 21st century because while science does an amazing job of taking apart things to examine them separately and in detail - art has the ability to put the pieces back together in a holistic way.

This is crucial because more often than not, everything is more than just a sum of it's parts. In other words, everything is a cause and effect. To completely understand how the world works and functions, we cannot simply examine each element separately, in isolation. It's the same as cogs in a machine, one can take them apart to examine the separate cogs, but the individual cogs themselves often give no indication as to how they were assembled. There are many variants of the possible combination of cogs that can be used. Art is like capturing a snapshot of the entire configuration so that the pieces can be put back together once taken apart. By expressing how we think and feel with art, we are able to stay connected to that which makes us human - the capability of abstract thought and a wider range of emotions. It is what gave birth to such an enormously diverse range of art in the first place. And while the occasional escape and fantasy is completely healthy ans necessary - let's not forget about the importance of the expression of our very real inner realities!