Can people express themselves through art? Sure. What I'm saying is, the two are not synonymous.
The most powerful and pure form of self-expression is simply being yourself. If you're lazy, you're expressing yourself much more purely by taking a nap than you would be by writing a poem about laziness.
People who are artists (eg., Van Gogh) are often quiet or loner types. So, art has to be the way they express themselves. But for a person who is outgoing and gregarious, simply being outgoing and gregarious expresses themselves.
Art is, aside from self-expression, also convoluted with all sorts of other things, like the technical aspects of the craft, the history of the medium (every piece of art carries the baggage of conventions of the medium, whether it adheres to them or subverts them), and the intended audience.
If it is possible to express yourself without art, is it possible to make art without expressing yourself? I'd answer that with a big, "Maybe". Maybe art that doesn't have any self-expression is bad art.
It also depends on how abstractly you're willing to consider "expressing yourself". In everything you do, you probably put a little bit of yourself in.
But what about art created by multiple people? Movies fit into this category, and so do videogames. Even if some person involved expressed themselves in that project, does it come through that it's that person's self-expression? I've said before that playing A Link to the Past gave me insight to the way Miyamoto's mind works. And seeing inside of someone else is part of art.
Well, it let me see how SOMEONE's mind worked. Whether it was Miyamoto's, or some no-name designer who worked on the puzzles, is probably unanswerable.
The most powerful and pure form of self-expression is simply being yourself. If you're lazy, you're expressing yourself much more purely by taking a nap than you would be by writing a poem about laziness.
People who are artists (eg., Van Gogh) are often quiet or loner types. So, art has to be the way they express themselves. But for a person who is outgoing and gregarious, simply being outgoing and gregarious expresses themselves.
Art is, aside from self-expression, also convoluted with all sorts of other things, like the technical aspects of the craft, the history of the medium (every piece of art carries the baggage of conventions of the medium, whether it adheres to them or subverts them), and the intended audience.
If it is possible to express yourself without art, is it possible to make art without expressing yourself? I'd answer that with a big, "Maybe". Maybe art that doesn't have any self-expression is bad art.
It also depends on how abstractly you're willing to consider "expressing yourself". In everything you do, you probably put a little bit of yourself in.
But what about art created by multiple people? Movies fit into this category, and so do videogames. Even if some person involved expressed themselves in that project, does it come through that it's that person's self-expression? I've said before that playing A Link to the Past gave me insight to the way Miyamoto's mind works. And seeing inside of someone else is part of art.
Well, it let me see how SOMEONE's mind worked. Whether it was Miyamoto's, or some no-name designer who worked on the puzzles, is probably unanswerable.
