“Art is Not Created In A Vacuum”

I had a professor who used to repeat over and over "art is not created in a vacuum." Of course if your name is Duchamp art might be a vacuum, but that is another matter altogether. What my professor was getting at was that art is influenced and influences the world around it.

It is impossible to separate art from the world. The inspiration for art comes from one’s experiences in the world. Those materials one uses to create art, be they paints, computers, pens, musical instruments, or old rusty vacuums come from the world. What the audience experiences as a result of the artwork is influenced by the audience’s past experiences within the world.

One can even argue that because art is part of the world that even if one is using art to help escape from the world that one fails as the artist’s attempts to escape the world merely create more of the world.

Art, be it good art or bad art, is never as simple as it seems.