Meaning of Art

The imagination is our most mysterious aspect. It connects our conscious with our subconscious. It allows us to explore our inner self and fill that urge to understand our ever changing body, mind and universe. It is the most important part of every one of us.
Sometimes when we look at a piece of art we understand it. Its meaning is obvious to us. Sometimes we do not understand it on a rational level, we simply feel something when we look at it. We can’t always tell why. Artists rarely provide a clear explanation of what their work is about. The only thing we can tell is that there is a reason behind it. No act of creativity can be said to come without meaning or substance.
Not every artist understands why he creates something, but one thing that we can say beyond doubt is that culture and surroundings are of constant impact on the artist. And their work will often reflect in part their own culture and surroundings and often impart to us their own reactions to such things, although not always. In this all art is connected. Nothing is truly devoid of meaning. Everything is a reaction to something.
"Art plays a special role in human personality. Like science and religion, art fulfills a universal urge to comprehend ourselves and the universe. This function makes art especially significant and, hence, worthy of our attention. Art has the power to reach the core of our being, which recognizes itself in the creative act. For that reason, art represents its creators’ deepest understanding and highest aspirations. At the same time, artists often act as articulators of shared beliefs and values, which they express through an ongoing tradition to us, their audience."
It was 4 million years ago that man started to walk on two legs. And back then we, like monkeys do now, would have used sticks and rocks as tools. But we didn’t make tools. To make a tool you have to think of a stick as a way to knock fruit of the tree even when there is no fruit around. But eventually man started to think ahead. And began to create proper tools, chipping away at sticks and stones to make more ideal tools, and it is at that stage that our history will begin, in a period we call the Paleolithic Period, or Old Stone Age, which lasted from 40,000 BCE to 8000 BCE.
A problem arises from claiming that everything is art when people see that canvass with a single colored line drawn down the middle, they'll question what it is. Art is not any old thing put on a pedestal. Art has meaning. It recreates reality, so it is recognizable. It expresses what the artist believes is important. It expresses his metaphysical value-judgment. It is important because it expresses something.
Today's "art" does not express anything. It is not a recreation of reality. It is unrecognizable and pointless. To obscure these facts, the new "artists" must change the definition of 'meaning'. They do this in two ways.
The first method by which the new "artists" attempt to destroy meaning is by adopting and promoting an irrational epistemology. They attempt to subvert reason by promoting emotions as the method of gaining knowledge. "Art" is claimed to directly stimulate emotions bypassing one's mind. This is why it is not surprising to hear the phrase "I can just feel the colors on this painting" One in a modern art museum. It is claimed that art has no cognitive role.
The second method by which they attempt to destroy meaning is by applying it to a different aspect of art. When it is said that art has meaning, its proper sense is that the work of art directly expresses a meaning. The content itself has meaning, and is directly perceivable. A statue, for instance, can show man a heroic and healthy, or cowardly and sickly. The meaning can be grasped by just observing the statue and recognizing the features that are being expressed.
The new "artists" apply meaning in a different way. They describe the alleged meaning of why the "artist" created it. They try to attach a "meaning" that is not expressed by the work. They might say an all-black canvass shows resentment for life. Or maybe they'll claim it shows fear of being too intimate. Regardless, they attempt to obfuscate the fact that their work has no objective meaning. They try to attach a "meaning" to the "art", invalidating the idea that art really must express something if it is art. But the fact remains, many artists fail to express what they really thought would be on the canvas and they try to give a different meaning to it.