Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Right vs. Left: Can't we just get along?

I have an interesting idea concerning the definition of art. I was listening to a classmate in my English class talk about how he didn't like how the teacher told us we couldn't expect to get perfect in the class because the probability of us meeting all the requirements are pretty slim. He said that he was a math major and that in his courses you either got the equations right or you didn't and it was a lot easier to get perfect on an assignment.

This started bouncing around in my little mind for a while because I still like English regardless of whether or not I get perfect in the assignments. I've always liked art over science as a rule and even Astronomy, which I had to take as a science for my degree, I took because I really just like to sit out at night, look at the stars and dream. I have always been of the mind that there are two clearly distinguishable groups of intelligent people which I identify as right-brained and left-brained. For those who don't know, the right side of the brain is usually associated with creativity and the left side is associated with logic (not being a biology student, I don't claim to know the details but this is my idea.)

Getting back on topic, I believe that these two generalized groups of people can both look at the same piece of art and come up with completely different opinions. The left-brained person might look at the art as a magnificent piece of technical achievement in which the artist was able to use the brush, camera, chisel or whatever to create an artwork that mirrors efforts of past masters to a degree that is awe-inspiring. The right-brained person looks at the same piece and says that he can see the emotion radiating out of the art in an aura that makes him want to swoon and reminds him of past visits to art with similar emotional effects upon the viewer.

Very dramatic I know, but the point is that while a left-brained person thinks of the piece as being technically perfect, the right-brained person is more perceptive to the emotional side of art. He or she can look at a piece and appreciate the qualities that can't be measured with a ruler or any other scale. My classmate was upset by the fact that he was not likely to get a perfect and that is why he is in a math course. Similarly, I am not looking to get a perfect as much as I am interested in exposing myself to incredible literature and drama because it "takes me away"; that's why I'm in English.

As a final note I should mention that I do believe that people can be a mix of the two sides and so I don't mean to say that you are either one or the other. All I am saying is that depending on the ratio that your brain is divided by, you are going to look at the world through slightly different eyes than those of the people around you.

1 comment:

athena said...

i think...i'm very confident...you will regret taking astronomy for your science credit [a common mistake made by star-gazers]. but keep me posted.