Josephine Alberte Hedemann Boesen

Name: Josephine Alberte Hedemann Boesen
Location: Aarhus, Denmark (transferring to Oslo, Norway in the fall)
Profession: Master student of Art History at Aarhus University, freelance writer and a firm believer in the phrase ‘all I know is that I know nothing’.

Art is a communication tool, why not treat it as such?
I think art… I think art is an important structuring element in society. Why? Because art has an ability to change people, an ability to change the way people speak about society and about each other. Image and word are interconnected entities that cannot be separated. Society is built on a notion of images and language. We direct our everyday consumerism through constant commercial influences. A product has to be pleasing to the eye, if it is not, it loses importance. When we speak about art within the art world, we tend not to touch upon consumerism or ‘usability’. Art as a product is a taboo. Art likes to reside within ivory towers. The problem with the ivory tower is that most people would rather just walk around them than through them. You see the problem? The confrontation between the inner and the outer world fails. No discourse evolves.

I think this is a grave misplacement of the potential of art. Art is not a glass of red vine at the end of a long day. It is not the icing on top of the cake. Art should not be for the lucky few. Art is for the masses. At least some art is. For art is not to be generalized. Art is a topic of extreme variety. Art is dirty and aggravating and sometimes art is just beauty. Like people, art varies in values. It is a tool to address difficult and complex topics. It is a tool to relax and calm your soul. Sometimes art is a consumeristic object of desire. A woman of finance will adorn her home with prestigious artists, for they will help her show the world how far she has come in life. Sometimes art is innocent. I am a student of art history with little money to spare but still I buy art, mostly because I believe in it. I don’t think the world suffers from an overload of imagination, on the other hand, I think it thrives.

We tend to believe more in what we define as ‘facts’. But what are facts really? When are we ever absolutely certain about anything? Not even in the natural sciences is there such a thing as ‘matter of fact’. There is only what we know now, which might be altered by what we will know in the future. As Socrates said: “The only thing we know is that we know nothing”. I think that is important to keep in mind when we look at the world today. The world is complex and aggravating and sometimes it is just beauty. Art is a tool to share our notions of this world because art is made by people. Therefore, art is always somehow about people and how we structure or influence the world. Art is a communication tool, why not treat it as such?

Articles by Josephine Alberte Hedemann Boesen