Art: A moment of relief from the fear of death

IF ART FAILS TO MOVE US, WE ARE SIMPLY PASSING TIME CONTEMPLATING OUR OWN MORTALITY. 

I want to highlight the significance of movement in art. If we start from the premise that movement is what strikes us about art, then we can explore what it is that creates movement and we begin to understand how, on a technical level, a work of art both fails and succeeds. 

An experience is necessarily a physical encounter. It needs a time frame and a space frame in order for us to perceive it as a tangible thing. If we are not convinced by the composition of an aesthetic, then we experience nothing. Aesthetic theory, in the sublime sense that Theodor Adorno so brilliantly argues, is the dialectic between the technical, tangible, physical domain of the structure of a work, and the enigmatic quality that true art gains through transcending the definable arena where art hopes to spring. 

The 'rhythm' of a work of art is what carries us from the beginning to the end of the experience. It is what distracts us from seeing it as a clever aesthetic composition. It is what keeps us honest and what reveals our humanity. As soon as we sense that we are aware of ourselves as art critics or observers, the experience has failed in artistic terms and we are back looking at brushstrokes and colours.