Art

So someone once told me that in order to fully understand art, you need a PhD.

Excuse me, but no you don't.

You need to have an open mind and a willingness to understand the insane and the beautiful.

Because that's all that art is. Insane people creating beautiful things from that which they have studied.

Edgar Degas, for example, would be hard to understand if you didn't understand his purpose behind his art. He paints, very simply, naked women. Lots of them. Some people would just look at his paintings and think he was a distgusting pervert. But instead, I look at his art and see beauty and the intelligence that can only be found in someone a little crazy, but only a little. Degas studied women. And you may be thinking, "Well of course he would 'study' the female body. He's a man."

Sure. Think that now. But stick with me here.

The human body was created by God to be a beautiful thing, made to be enjoyed and for us to take pleasure in. The Rennaissance was all about the study of the human body. Like Michaelangelo's statue of David. No one seems to think he's a pervert. But he's doing the same thing as anyone else painting/sculpting a naked person. They are studying, and discovering how to master the beauty that is the human body. People see the art of the Rennaissance, when the focus of art was the naked human body, and they can't stop talking about it's beauty. Then you get into modern art like Degas, and it's ugly, it's distgusting. . . but only to the unlearned eye. Because Degas study of prostitues and women around the house wasn't him finding an excuse to sketch naked women. He was studying her body. He was learning the different ways and positions (bending over, standing, sitting/lying down) that could be drawn. This is why he loved drawing the dancers. Dancer can do amazing things with their bodies. He loved to capture them as they put on their dancing slippers, as they danced, as they stretched. . . to Degas it was an opportunity.

That's how I see things. As opportunities. And I look at art like that of Degas (who is one of my favorite artists, by the way) and I learn from what he learned. I learn from the sketches, the way he used pencil, charcol, and pastels to make his dancers come alive.

So no, you don't need a PhD to understand art. You just need to be willing to learn about something beautiful and intelligent.