If we look at all kinds of work, in the arts and sciences, over the world we will see that they differ from each other in many respects: they will depend on where they are from in the world, in other words their culture, values and beliefs and whether it follows or breaks with accepted conventions from this place and time. If we investigate further into the subject, we will also find that some works develop knowledge further than others, making us, individuals or groups (communities), learn more from some types of work than others.
We can also presume that depending on the work itself, the amount learned will depend on whether it is aimed for a specific public, a community, the whole society or even the maker himself. With all these variables taken into consideration, we can now start analyzing specific examples to see if we can, in fact, learn more from work that follows conventions or from work that breaks with accepted conventions.
The arts are a means of communication/ expression and as a method of passing on to the viewer some kind of knowledge or information by appealing to the person’s sense of perception, emotion and reason. We can also look at art as a kind of language in music, theatre and body painting. If we look at indigenous art, for example, we can see that although they do not produce art for entertainment, they are constantly following tradition. They are maintaining the cultural values and spiritual knowledge acquired from their ancestors by following tradition through ritual.
Some examples can be the clothes, body paint, ritual dances, objects made out of straw and wood, which we consider to be a kind of art even though they are made for their own community utility. The Indians don’t try to break these conventions and produce new things because they consider continuing traditions to be a part of their spiritual belief and knowledge and so don’t need to. The native Brazilian Yanomami1 tribe use different types of paint, leaves, wood and flowers to decorate themselves.
While we see this as body art, their intention is to follow tradition and prepare themselves for spiritual rituals. To them each design has a specific meaning. On the other hand, there is also work in art that breaks with convention. The Surrealist Movement, which started during the 1920’s and lasted about two decades, had the intention of producing art with abstract images. They represented dreams, fantasies and even nightmares through their paintings by appealing to the viewer’s emotion and ability to interpret what was shown.
However, they followed the Surrealist Manifesto, written by Andri?? Breton, with specific rules and regulations they had to follow so they were to an extent “following a new convention they were creating”. The manifesto stated that “we have managed to banish from the mind everything that may rightly or wrongly be termed superstition, or fancy; forbidden is any kind of search for truth which is not in conformance with accepted practices”2.
They had regulations they had to follow, in order to be in the Surrealism Movement, which stated that they couldn’t follow previously accepted conventions from society. Although this is a contradiction, it was the way they found of expressing knowledge. The Surrealist Movement aimed to ‘teach’ the viewer to think and interpret life in different ways, see reality and criticize everything that people accepted as being a ‘good life’.
Although the surrealist painters produced their work based on their imagination, their work was aimed not only at a specific group of people, but at society as a whole. In my case, I learn more from work (in the arts) that breaks with convention, rather than art which follow conventions. It attracts me and makes me interested in it because it is an interpretation of “reality”. As an individual I was able to learn from a movement which had rules and regulations stating that their intentions were exactly to break with conventions. The whole society was also able to learn from it.
