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The applause gives what the art deserves. In the midst of the crowd, the art becomes the star; the need of the moment; the truth of the day. It gets paid for all the emotions it was able to induce in the followers. It takes the centre stage. The shine of the sun falls on it and makes it reach the heights it never imagined. The art delivers the unfulfilled dream, the aim, the aspiration or the lost self of its audience. They start relating to it. The art reflects something that they crave, missed, or aspired to be. It triggers the audience to feel the life; the one which they lost in searching themselves.
Either the art doesn’t exist now or the artist, or maybe both exist in one.
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This aura of the art draws the attention of its followers, to the hands that created it. The search for the creator starts relentlessly and it ends only when the artist comes in front. The camera shifts for appreciation from the art to the artist. The chaos shifts around them. Unable to understand what is happening, the artist smiles. They are not the people immune to this limelight. People start chasing them, believing them, following them. Gifts, buckets, photographs all come handy with this appreciation. The artists still in a state of confusion tries to understand what is happening. People start falling for them. They start loving them. Expectations from each of their upcoming arts increases; each work now is looked upon as something that will be even better from the previous one. Each art now is supposed to relate to the audience in an even better way than the previous one. Slowly the artist starts taking the place of the art which was created by them. In the due course of the time, the artist even overlaps the art.
Either the art doesn’t exist now or the artist, or maybe both exist in one. There is no difference between them. Whatever is created now is actually looked upon as what the creator is; this is what the followers start to believe. The creation is not some random vision, fantasy, or the ideology of the creator, but is thought upon as the personality of the creator as whole. As long as it soothes the urge, ego or beliefs of the followers, they continue loving the person behind the art. This love grows as they now have found a human existence of the art which resembles their beliefs and thoughts. They have someone, to whom they can look up to, try to be with and adore. They start following this person as a living art. They love every gesture of the artist. A splash of the paint brush or four beautiful lines framed in a sonnet, everything draws a meaning to their lives and they start loving the artist more. The art that had made artist, turns to the background like the watermark and the artists are what is seen. The followers now love the human existence of art and dream and desire of a life with the artists.
What the lover/followers miss at large, is to understand that the artist is just the normal man.
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But time has a cruel nature and artists in the end are humans whose power of imagination varies from time to time and work to work. As time passes, the layer of the art from the skin of the artists starts fading away. For the lovers, spending more time with the artist, start to realize the human existence of the artist more as an ordinary person and less than of the art. The artist shows the traits of a normal human. They have their good moods, they have their bad ones. They have their times of thought; they have their times of frustrations. As they are into the thought of their art, they may be even mean or maniac at times, but that is what is required to explore the unknown territories of their own self. Many of their works do make a huge impact and some of theirs don’t. They try hard and experiment with new things, which may or may not please all the audience. This suddenly draws their lovers in a different direction. The lovers start believing that the person is now changed. His beliefs now no longer hold the same alignment with them as it used to before. Their logic and understanding starts them drawing away from the artists. The love withers away and the essence in the art gets over with it. The lovers get separated and the love gets lost.
What the lover/followers miss at large, is to understand that the artist is just the normal man. They see different dimensions of the same object and portray it in the way they feel. They are not in sync with what is happening; they have their own understanding as to the situation and so their art varies with their thoughts and understanding. They may please you with a certain form of their art, but that is not the only form that defines them as an artist. There lies a whole sea with the depth of an ocean in them to explore and project to the world. They cannot not restrict to the same things again and again.
As the love withers, the craze for the artist moves away and the person, no longer represents what their art spoke some time back. The art now becomes an old culture and with time the lovers/followers move on.
Art, thus, has the last laugh and the artist’s pain fails to be heard.
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Photo credit: Getty Images