Can Art Represent Our Feelings?

Face-to-face with a Rothko painting, most people can’t help but have an emotional reaction.

I was in a similar boat many years ago when confronted by one of these massive, larger-than-life color fields. It’s an overwhelming emotion, one that starts at your fingers and works its way up to behind your eyes. It’s hard to put a finger on it, at least for me. It felt like an emotion in a similar vein as those extreme shades, revelation, or desperation, or teetering on the brink of existence. It’s like if someone asked you to describe the emotion “sad” and they had never experienced sadness once. You’re left linguistically lacking, hoping, trying to fill that absence with descriptors that never fill that gap-toothed maw, tongue poking at the empty cavity where something once was.

Rothko himself led a difficult life. Escaping from Europe following anti-Semitism and violence, Rothko came to America. He struggled with extreme depression, eventually taking his own life. His struggle, his sadness, and his melancholy come through onto the canvas. Rothko had a very specific intent of having the viewer have an emotional reaction to his color fields, adjusting lighting in galleries and other specifications until a perfect viewing space was created for the piece.

Art is often created from a place of emotion. Whether or not it elicits an emotional reaction is an entirely different matter, though an interesting one: what might spark one response in one viewer might have an entirely different effect on another. People’s individual experiences shape how they view and receive art. At its core, art is about an emotional back and forth.

There are some cases where art doesn’t quite fit this bill. Commissioned art often comes with a layer of separation for the artist. Political art also comes from less of a personal perspective. It’s hard to keep art in a box; it will always find ways to break the rules of what you know.

Art exists as a manifestation of our feelings, something brought forth from dreams, hopes, and unrealized futures. It takes many shapes and forms and is ultimately one of the facets of humanity that make it most endearing. It has always been a reflection of what makes us most human. If bees are for making honey, then humans are for making art; it’s only as natural as the blood that flows through our veins.