The Whole Ball of Wax & Definition of art

Definition of art:

I define art as a tool used to express ideas, opinions, thoughts, feelings, arguments, etc. Art is considered to be something very ambiguous. There is no set definition or correct way of doing it, or speaking it, viewing it, learning it, interpreting it, and I believe that is how art differs from most of the other disciplines touched upon in the article. 

The Whole Ball of Wax:

Perplexing. That is the most accurate word I can think of to describe this article. After reading it over multiple times, I am still not completely sure what the author is trying to get across to the audience. From my limited understanding, however, I can conclude that Saltz is simply giving us different definitions of "art" and also showing how those definitions vary greatly from person to person. 

                    I found that the vocabulary and overall structure of this article was very difficult to follow and engage in. I found myself often getting lost in the run-on sentences and repetition of words. For example, the sentence "In his eloquent essay "Vermeer in Bosnia," Lawrence Weschler reports that Antonio Cassese, a distinguished Italian jurist serving on the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in the Hague, would sometimes go to the Mauritshuis museum after hearing continual testimony about Balkan atrocities." (Saltz 2) completely threw me for a loop. I felt as if Saltz was just cramming so much unnecessary information into that one opening sentence, probably to try and give us a little bit of background information, but because of the lengthiness I could not determine what the purpose of the paragraph truly was. The excessive use of different names, without explanation, jumbled up in my brain and made it very difficult for me to keep up. As he continued on with the paragraph, Saltz mentioned two specific pieces of artwork: Girl With a Pearl Earring and View of Delft. Girl With a Pearl Earring is a painting that I have seen and heard of many times in the past, and I was familiar with the work. View of Delft, however, sounded new and foreign and somehow intrigued me. I decided to google the work to see specifically what the author was referring to. I have attached the image below:

In "The Whole Ball of Wax", Saltz explains how Cassese does not look at these pieces of artwork because they are "merely beautiful", but because they were "invented to heal pain". (Saltz 2) He touches upon how these specific works of art make the viewer feel some sense of peace and serenity. When I took a look at this photo, however, I felt that it radiated a sense of gloominess and possible impending doom. The scale of the people on the land looking so small in comparison to the dark cloud overhead made me feel that the people are small and helpless to whatever doom is about to come upon them. This may be a very wary way of viewing this piece of work, but that's the beauty behind the ambiguity of art, isn't it? However, I do agree with Cassese in the fact that he believed that when you look at a piece of art, you do not see simply colors and lines and brush strokes on a canvas, but instead you get pulled into the scene set by the artist and become a part of the piece as a whole.

Overall, I found this article, as perplexing as it was, still pretty interesting and abstract. After researching the piece of art being referred to a little bit myself and attempting to connect with the art as well as the article on some kind of level, I definitely felt less like just a boring, old reader and developed a better understanding of Saltz's points.