A while ago I got angry at the claim that the purpose of art should be to make people uncomfortable, and to push them out of their comfort zone. I’m not down for that sort of prescriptivism about the purpose of art, especially when it comes from such a… neurotypical place of safety and comfort. It’s easy to say that the purpose of art should be to make people uncomfortable when you yourself live the majority of your life in comfort, happiness and security. But not everyone has that luxury. Some people spend most of their time outside their “comfort zone”, in discomfort, pain, over-stimulation, insecurity, and danger. And there is absolutely a place for art that is aimed at those people that focuses on trying to give them the exact opposite: for the viewer whose normal state is one of discomfort, art that attempts to provide them with some comfort and security is just as radical as art which attempts to shake the complacent and usually comfortable out of that state. 

  There’s space for all kinds of art, but when a viewer categorically states “art should do this”, they are not just denying the lived experiences of other people and the ability and right of art and artists to attempt to enter dialogue with those people, they are in fact, claiming that all art should be for them. 

  Whether art is ‘for you’ or not is neither the imperative of the artist or the viewer alone. Whether art is ‘for you’ is not a declarative ruling from any individual. Whether art is ‘for you’ is instead part of a discourse between the artist and the viewer. The artist creates work with certain people in mind. But even if they declare ‘this art is not for you, it’s for other people’ they cannot stop you appreciating it, viewing it, interpreting it in ways which they did not intend. Equally, the viewer cannot stop the artist’s intentions shaping how they make art, and making it for certain groups of people, they cannot stop other people engaging with that art and feeling that it is ‘for them’. What happens (or should happen) is that in viewing the art, in deciding how they feel about it, and measuring it against what they personally want from art, the viewer is entering a silent conversation with the artist. And if the viewer decides that a piece of art is not ‘for them’ that should not be taken by either party to constitute a criticism. It is simply a fact about the piece of art, and whether it functions as an interaction between viewer and artist. If it’s not ‘for you’, just find something that is, and move on. 

  The flip side of this is that for some people, for marginalised, divergent, diverse groups, it can be incredibly hard to find art that is ‘for them’, and they have every right to bemoan the lack of that art, and, perhaps more importantly, the lack of artists (more accurately, of opportunities for those artists, because they most certainly do exist) who make art that is ‘for them’. 

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