We went up to Cincinnati yesterday and walked through the experience. It was quite interesting and I learned a lot about the artist.
There was session where an art teacher started talking about what Van Gogh was thinking when he painted Starry Night and all these existential meanings that he put in there.
I’m standing there, “Thinking, nah. He probably just felt like painting like that.”
We all see art through the lens of who we are. The artists paints or writes from the lens of who they are. No two people see the world exactly the same. And when someone is going through something it is often much more personal to them so they don’t see bigger meanings which others might ascribe to works. It was just how they felt, what they wanted to express in their art at that time.
I have no problem with the idea that the painting may mean those things but I was amused at the thought that the artists *meant* to put those things there.