Art without art

When you take away the material component of art, the brush strokes on the canvas, the notes of the music, or the stanzas of a poem what is left is the emotions and thoughts that drove the artist to create their work. The physical item, or the sound created is little more then the medium through which the artist has chosen to express their emotions and place them into a permanent existence. Thus this shows that the nature of art is not so much the piece of art itself, but the story that is given to it of both its creation and the story that it is used to portray. When one looks at a painting by Pollok one doesn’t simply see the erratic splashes of paint that cover the painting, but instead they see his movements he went through as he created it, as well as the story it tells. Take away the painting itself and though the story looses some of its brilliance it keeps the tale of the creator. When one looks on Van Gough’s Self Portrait with the his troubled, depressed expression, and the bandage covering the place where an ear once hung from his face we do not simply see a sad man with a bandaged ear, we see a portion of the tale of Van Gough’s life and his depression over a failed relationship which drove him to cut off his own ear and have it sent to his lover. If the painting is gone the story still remains, though it is less illustrious then it is when one sees the painting and even when one considers the collections of paintings known to be done by Van Gough at that point of his life. Even the Mona Lisa has pieces of it that remain though its story is no longer known there is still the story of Da Vinci himself and the amazing life that he lead. In the end the best way to describe the nature of art considering this line of reasoning is that the material portion of the art, exists as a vivid and tangible portal into the artists mind and maybe even into their soul itself.