Friday, February 14, 2025

WHAT MAKES ONE APPRECIATE ARTWORK?

To appreciate something as art demands an artistic environment and aesthetic knowledge. One has to be aware that art demands appreciation for its existence from the audience, without the audience, a painting is just a painting and nothing more. Others believe that an artwork without a concept is blind and thus make the audience experience emptiness while looking at it. One will realize that what is important in the artwork is not what it means but what it does in the mind of a viewer, the charge of effect it contains and transmits in one’s mind. An artwork could be able to fuse the spirit and sensitize the audience; it creates communication between the viewer and the artwork itself. Others argue that artworks stir and shake the inner person in order for them to appreciate it.
Art can be defined as a cultural practice that involves the creation of a specific and definable object for someone to appreciate. The function of an artwork may then be self-conscious, personal or collective expression of the every day life. A kind of expression, medium and style of an artist can add value to material for it to be appreciated. Looking at forms such as colours, shape, line, subject matter and techniques can attract an audience to a painting if they are applied properly.

To speak of art appreciation, however, is necessary to think in terms of exhibitions in Botswana. One could judge this through the sales during exhibitions. People attend exhibitions but one will wonder if they appreciate art or not because buying is still a problem. Once the audience develops art appreciation they will divorce from just supporting by word of mouth and start personal collections in their houses because they will not be able to resist the pressure provoked by their relationship with the artwork. Local artists are working hard to produce quality artworks that are made to communicate with the audience on current social issues, especially the artworks of Velias Ndaba and others. This high standard production of artworks is designed to provoke the audience’s appreciation.

The necessary condition of the artwork is to satisfy the moral and physical needs of one’s life. It is of importance for the audience to start to develop a relationship with an artwork because the artwork is made to speak to the individual. If there is no appreciation, we might have the so-called death of the subject. Tracing the development of art in this country could be interpreted in the idealistic perspective of some discovery of new methods of making painting/sculpture.

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