Different art forms express different levels of vulnerability. The scale of vulnerability is the distance between the emotion being expressed and the medium. This distance makes it harder to perceive the emotion itself. Distance blurs the details and leaves it up to the viewer’s mind to fill in the gaps. The further the distance, the less vulnerable the art form is. Furniture making is an art form but it is hard for someone to clearly identify that the creator of a couch made it as a vessel for emotion while mourning a lost relationship. Metaphors increase opacity.
Circling back to this a few months later:
- realized that it is not the medium that dictates the level of vulnerability in a work of art.
- the couch creator could use the couch as a base for his poetry and cover the leather in extremely explicit vulnerable poetry.
- but then is it not still poetry that is the medium of vulnerability?
