Art Is a Lie That Brings Us Closer to the Truth
“Art is a lie that brings us closer to the truth”- Pablo Picasso
"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket; I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." Art is exactly the same: it portrays the truth in the form of a camouflage of words, colour, and speech. People say that art is an imitation of reality; however, it is in fact the total opposite. Reality is restricted by the laws of nature, but art isn’t. It is boundary-less; it can be an exaggeration of reality, it can be the total opposite of reality, it can even be something that is incomprehensible to everybody but the artist. Art is a manifestation of our inner most emotions that even words fall short in expressing. At times a piece of art, may be the craziest of things, and yet may have enormous philosophical implications. Art need not be an exact imitation of reality, it may in fact be a lie, and yet at the same time may compel us to view things in a different light: the truth.
To talk about truth, we must first define it. In this context, truth adopts a far more general term, which refers to everything in reality- emotions, relationships, pain, joy etc. By far, the greatest example that complements this quote is a painting called “The Treachery of Images”, which was painted by a Belgian artist- Rene Magritte. The painting is of a pipe, but below the pipe is a line in French saying “This is not a pipe”. Magritte justified himself by saying that if he had written on the painting that this was a pipe, he would have been lying, because it was just a representation of a pipe. He said, it would only be a pipe, if “I could put tobacco in it, and smoke it”.
Leo Tolstoy wrote a shot novel called “The Diary of a Madman” which is actually an autobiography, but was portrayed using fictional characters. The characters are lies, but it brings people to the truth of Tolstoy. The same idea
"Yes, I have tricks in my pocket; I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion." Art is exactly the same: it portrays the truth in the form of a camouflage of words, colour, and speech. People say that art is an imitation of reality; however, it is in fact the total opposite. Reality is restricted by the laws of nature, but art isn’t. It is boundary-less; it can be an exaggeration of reality, it can be the total opposite of reality, it can even be something that is incomprehensible to everybody but the artist. Art is a manifestation of our inner most emotions that even words fall short in expressing. At times a piece of art, may be the craziest of things, and yet may have enormous philosophical implications. Art need not be an exact imitation of reality, it may in fact be a lie, and yet at the same time may compel us to view things in a different light: the truth.
To talk about truth, we must first define it. In this context, truth adopts a far more general term, which refers to everything in reality- emotions, relationships, pain, joy etc. By far, the greatest example that complements this quote is a painting called “The Treachery of Images”, which was painted by a Belgian artist- Rene Magritte. The painting is of a pipe, but below the pipe is a line in French saying “This is not a pipe”. Magritte justified himself by saying that if he had written on the painting that this was a pipe, he would have been lying, because it was just a representation of a pipe. He said, it would only be a pipe, if “I could put tobacco in it, and smoke it”.
Leo Tolstoy wrote a shot novel called “The Diary of a Madman” which is actually an autobiography, but was portrayed using fictional characters. The characters are lies, but it brings people to the truth of Tolstoy. The same idea