The Skill of Acquirement— The True Way to Enjoy Art

We all have our preferences.

Whether it be fantasy novels, action movies, classical music, or something completely different. These tastes seem quite arbitrary, right?

But, what if I told you they weren’t?

There is a way to enjoy everything, and acquire any taste. While this ability has its limits, and the flexibility towards a different form of art is finite, the capacity of the average human brain to acquire new tastes is often underestimated.

You try something once, whether it be a new piece of writing, painting, movie, or song, and you are strongly repelled by it.

You try it again.

And again.

And again.

And every time you try it, you notice something that you like in it a bit more. It may start with liking how something looks or sounds, a small aspect, and then you become more open to looking for more things you like within the art form, and as you learn how to appreciate it, you slowly acquire a taste for it. And, as you consume the work of art more, you begin to realize the beauties of the art form, and why people like it. And as you do so, you become a better critic yourself. In other words, learning to like something increases your ability to enjoy all art forms more, by forcing you to analyze the work and by making you a better critic.

But we all have our opinions. And there are some things in this world that we simply hate, no matter what we do about it. So, what do we do then?

Like I mentioned above, the skill has its limits. While acquiring a new taste certainly helps us understand the full picture of the arts as a whole, and how people enjoy different kinds of movies and music, we are all born with slightly different emotional responses, and a work of art our minds class as “good” is based on how much of an emotional reaction it is able to create within our brain. Basically, our unique emotional profile enables us to have our own lens at the artwork that we enjoy — our own unique perspective. The skill of acquiring a new taste is simply that of learning to see the world from other people’s perspective, and learning to think the way they think. It does not change our emotional profile, and if the thing we are trying to acquire strongly opposes our emotional profile, then we will always strongly dislike it. However, such cases are much rarer than we tend to believe, and most of us tend to dismiss something instantly before making an attempt to analyze it and understand it fully. We will always enjoy what comes to us naturally more, however, by having an open mind to the arts, we will open our doors wider to all art forms, and get a better sense of ourselves and our sensibilities.

Thank you for reading this entry.