The third Mona Lisa
On the point of art
Coal miners don’t have to think too hard about the point of mining coal. It’s a pretty straightforward journey from pulling energy rocks out of the ground to powering a civilization.
But art is trickier. A lot of my conversations with other artists end up focusing on the point of art itself. Put another way, when I’m arguing why I didn’t like a movie, it’s really about why I don’t think the movie actually satisfies the point of art itself.
So what is the point of art?
Truth.
Let’s consider the art of standup comedy. When a joke lands, we laugh. Why do we laugh? Because the comedian is explaining something to you that’s relatable. A good joke makes us feel, “Oh my God, that’s so true!” And sometimes it’s so so true that we even say this out loud.
All great art holds a mirror up to each of us and asks, “you see how X all of this is, right?” where “X” might be…
beautiful
nuanced
horrifying
brief
absurd
…or any other number of commentaries the artist wants to make.
We laugh because jokes are accurate reflections—truths—of our lives. Sometimes these realities are so baked into our day-to-day experience that we often don’t even notice them.
One of my favorite jokes is Jerry Seinfeld’s bit about that single, tiny hair on the shower wall and how we cup our hands under the water, tossing water at the hair, trying to get it to work its way, inch by inch, down the wall and into the drain. It’s hilarious because it’s a reality we all experience—one that is so invisible, we don’t even bother bringing it up because we must be the only person this happens to.
And then, when it’s pointed out, we go, “Oh my God, that’s so true! Of course this happens to everyone!” It’s like we’re able to let out a breath we didn’t realize we were holding. Hearing that someone else goes through the same things we go through validates us. Sharing our truth and realizing that we’re not the only one validates us. We feel seen.
The best art confirms that we are not alone. None of us asked to be alive. And none of us know, really, why life exists. But we are alive. And life does exist. And fucking tragic and hilarious things are happening constantly. So we might as well share our experiences with each other.
You might think about art as a competition to see who can most uniquely reflect the common human experiences.
Conversely, the worst of art doesn’t quite understand what it is to be human. The worst of art is a copy of a copy of a copy—and with each copy, something important is lost along the way.1
All art is copying. You might even say stealing. Sometimes artists steal and miss the underlying truth, which is why you end up with things that are all style and no substance. They feel empty because they are. There’s no “there” there. We see this all the time in movies and television where actors are moving from room to room, saying things to other actors, all the while no one feels anything because the things they’re saying don’t resonate with our experiences as human beings.
When someone says “the dialogue sucks,” what they’re really saying is “people don’t talk like that.” When someone says “the acting is bad,” what they’re really saying is “the actors didn’t dig deep enough.” When someone says “the story sucks,” what they’re really saying is “the story didn’t feel like something anyone actually would go through.”
In other words, there wasn’t any truth.
Art without truth is like that third Mona Lisa.
Distorted outlines.
Distant echoes.
Degraded memories.
As artists, it’s imperative that we pay more attention to the world around us so that our art is more truthful. And honesty doesn’t mean photo-realism. There’s still style and point of view and perspective. But the more we pay attention to our world, the more we can explain to others how exactly we see that world.
And if we’re lucky, they’ll look at our art and say, “Oh my God, that’s so true!”
I’m sure some brilliant artist has made a piece of art about this very topic, because putting a lot of time and energy into creating something, but missing the main point of what you were trying to accomplish, is a very human experience as well.