Letter to ARC

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Letter to ARC

From

Published before 2005


[ Editorial note: The correspondent implies at the end of his letter that he is not a native English speaker. ]

Dear ARC Staff,

I am a art student currently study Contemporary art in Australia. I plan to write an essay for one of my class and thru Google I found here. I hope I could got an answer from you which is about why define art? Many times I found people just there discussing the problem of terms and movements. Which is right and wrong, which is good and bad art. But why? If there is no modernism, there will be no post-modernism, isn't it? I believe that whatever it is art or so-called non-art, good or bad art, when we look at them, we always got a feeling about that. But where the feeling comes from?

As a newbie in this huge art world, sometime when I trying to sense something from an art-work, I always feel frustrated by... well, such as - which kind of art it belongs to. I know it would be thousands definitions about Art nowadays but I believe that art is not there to express the idea, but to express our soul. Where the ideas come from? where the feelings come from? It is all come from our soul. I do not like people compare science with Art for science is much colder than Art, neither less creative than Art. Or I should say it is Art enlight Science. We could give many nouns to Science but for Art... I feel it will break Art apart, just like a piece of paper - We reject the modernism and hence tear that part called 'Modernism' from the whole paper and now it is a paper lost a corner, it is incomplete. It is ourselves who create lots of terms and movement and then more terms and movenment come to reject the previous one... finally, we tear the Art into pieces...

If Soul is free to enjoy the beauty all over the world, then free Art as well, for it is our Soul create Art, isn't it?

However... I still not sure about that... sometimes I feel myself quite rationable... Please help me. I am looking forward your reply.

Best regards,
(Sorry for my poor English)
Raymond.G