Art as a Portal

I’ve come to see art as a technology, and a very old one at that, perhaps one of the first to be discovered after fire. So what is it for? In a pragmatic sense art is for training our ability to see better. Not in the sense that it improves vision to the point that one doesn’t need glasses anymore, but rather training our ability to better perceive the world around us and see things that would have either gone unnoticed or seen in a way that is to our disadvantage.

In a metaphysical sense, art is a portal. You are not to look at it but rather through it. The thing pictured is not the thing itself but rather an interface or conduit through which you perceive reality from a different sensory apparatus altogether. One which we normally cannot access without the help of an outside medium, such as a great work of art.