Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889 

Vincent van Gogh, Starry Night, 1889, Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Art is powerful, and I think one of the most beautiful things about art is its power to develop even though its a stagnant object. Once finished and placed in a museum, the composition of a work of art will never change, but I find it beautiful that the interpretation and (more importantly) meaning of a work of art can evolve long after an artist is dead.

For any person arguing that art should not be valued to the extent by which the core sciences are in modern society, I would argue that their mentality is direct evidence of the loss of understanding behind art. Art is powerful because it is constant yet evolutionary. Art is meant to be argued over, and I think that’s why modern society sees such derivation and misunderstanding in the art world today.

Modern artists make statements that devolve into nonsense and as a result, the viewer is uninterested because they no longer understand or relate to the art. To me, that’s scary. I don’t like where art is going because it no longer changes minds or influences people like it did before. The passion surrounding the art world is lacking both in creation and viewership. Modern art seems… lazy to me.

I spend a lot of time trying to seem like a cultured, maybe even tortured art lover. I would silently judge people who liked “basic” works of art like the Mona Lisa, Monet’s Waterlilies, and Starry Night by Van Gogh. But after I watched one of my five favorite films for the first time, Midnight in Paris, I changed my mind.

Midnight in Paris, a film with a poster that mirrors Starry Night, changed my perspective on Starry Night because it “painted” (wink) the piece in a new light. What once was an overprinted work of art then become a symbol for the changing of art along with the values of life.

The lesson that Owen Wilson, one of my favorite actors, learns in the film after Owen Wilson time travels back to the height of the 1920s is that we all wish we were born in a different time. We want to experience things that have already happened in the height of creation so much that we don’t see the wonderful developments of current life, and I’ve brought that new lens to Starry Night.

To me, Starry Night is a divine moment in time captured by van Gogh, serving the message that each detail of current life has beauty. The viewer doesn’t care what detail occurs outside of the framing of the painting, because the frame of the town is enough – a little world that is enough the way it is.

Though I constantly complain about the pathway modern art has taken, it is important to keep in mind that changes in art directly reflect changes in society. Modern art is important and crucial, and there are plenty of valuable components that the viewer should make a greater effort to understand.