Art Blog #134: Art Is In The Eye Of The Beholder - Essay

The gallery was run by a reclusive artist named Lila Marceau. A woman of indeterminate age, her appearance was as enigmatic as her art. She wore flowing clothes spattered with paint, her long silver hair often tied in a loose braid. Her piercing eyes seemed to look through people, rather than at them. The city’s art circles whispered about her—some called her a genius, others a charlatan. Her art defied convention. Instead of traditional paintings or sculptures, her exhibits were strange amalgamations of discarded objects: a clock missing its hands encased in amber resin; a shattered mirror refracting light in an ever-changing dance; a weathered violin whose strings were replaced by threads of silver and gold.

One chilly autumn evening, a young man named Ethan stumbled into Epiphany. Ethan had always considered himself a rationalist. He was a software engineer by trade, a solver of logical puzzles, and a skeptic of anything he deemed frivolous. Art, in his opinion, was an indulgence for the wealthy, a scam perpetuated by those who couldn't contribute to society in practical ways. He was only there because his best friend, Maya, had dragged him along.

“You’ll love it,” Maya had promised, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “Or, at the very least, you’ll hate it, but even then, you’ll be talking about it for days.”

Ethan had rolled his eyes but agreed to come, more to placate her than out of genuine curiosity.

Inside, the gallery felt almost otherworldly. The air was thick with the smell of turpentine and aged wood, mingling with something floral and unfamiliar. Shadows played tricks on the walls, cast by the flickering light of oil lamps that hung in clusters from the ceiling. Each piece of art seemed to demand attention, yet none of them adhered to any conventional definition of beauty.

“What… is this?” Ethan muttered as he stood before a piece titled Time’s Embrace. It was a hulking mass of welded metal and shattered glass, with an old pocket watch embedded at its heart, its face cracked but its hands still ticking.

“What does it look like to you?” a voice asked from behind him.

He turned to find Lila herself, her gaze fixed on him with unsettling intensity.

“It looks like a pile of junk,” Ethan said bluntly.

Maya gasped, nudging him sharply in the ribs. “Ethan, that’s so rude!”

But Lila only smiled, a knowing curve of her lips. “And yet, here you are, staring at it. Why?”

Ethan hesitated. “I don’t know. It’s… odd. The watch, it feels out of place, but also… important.”

“Interesting,” Lila said softly. “You see, art doesn’t exist in the piece itself. It exists in the interaction between the piece and the observer. What you see, what you feel—that is the art.”

Ethan frowned, unconvinced. “So, if someone sees nothing, does that mean the art doesn’t exist?”

Lila’s smile widened, as though he had just asked her favorite question. “Precisely.”

Over the following weeks, Ethan couldn’t shake the conversation from his mind. He found himself returning to Epiphany alone, drawn by a compulsion he didn’t fully understand. He began to linger before the pieces, studying their every detail, trying to decipher their secrets. One night, he stood before a piece titled Fractured Symphony, a piano with no keys, its strings replaced by jagged shards of glass. When he leaned closer, he realized the shards were etched with tiny words—poems, in dozens of languages. He felt a strange, inexplicable pang in his chest.

Gradually, Ethan’s skepticism began to erode. He started seeing beauty in the unconventional, finding meaning in the meaningless. His world, once rigid and orderly, began to blur at the edges.

One day, as he wandered through the gallery, he noticed a new piece. It was unlike anything else Lila had displayed. A simple canvas, painted entirely black, hung in the center of the room. Beneath it, a small plaque read: Void. Ethan stared at it for what felt like hours, feeling an overwhelming sense of unease. The blackness seemed to pull at him, a silent scream echoing in the emptiness.

When Lila appeared beside him, he asked, “What is this supposed to mean?”

“What does it mean to you?” she countered.

Ethan’s jaw tightened. “It feels like despair. Like being lost, with no way out.”

Lila nodded, her expression somber. “That’s one way to see it. For others, it’s peace. A blank slate. Freedom.”

“How can it be both?”

“Because art is in the eye of the beholder,” she said. “And so is life.”

Ethan left the gallery that evening with a heavy heart, the words echoing in his mind. Over the next few days, he found himself consumed by a desire to create something—anything. He gathered scraps of wood and metal, broken electronics, and fragments of glass, and began to piece them together in his tiny apartment. His hands moved without logic or reason, guided by something deep and instinctual.

When he finally stepped back to look at his creation, he felt a surge of emotion he couldn’t name. It was a chaotic, jumbled mess, but to him, it was alive. He decided to take it to Epiphany.

Lila greeted him with a rare smile as he dragged the piece into the gallery. “What have we here?”

Ethan hesitated, suddenly self-conscious. “I don’t know if it’s… anything. I just felt like I had to make it.”

Lila studied the piece for a long moment, her eyes gleaming with something like pride. “It’s everything,” she said finally. “Because it’s yours.”

The gallery was quiet that evening as Ethan’s piece joined the collection. He watched as a young woman stopped before it, her face lighting up with recognition. “It reminds me of my grandmother’s sewing machine,” she whispered to her companion. “The way the pieces fit together, it’s like stitching memories.”

Ethan’s chest tightened. For the first time, he understood what Lila had meant. Art wasn’t about the creator’s intention, nor the materials used. It was about connection. It was about seeing—truly seeing—through someone else’s eyes.

As he left the gallery that night, he felt lighter, as though a weight he hadn’t realized he was carrying had been lifted. The city around him seemed different, more vibrant, more alive. And in the quiet corners of his mind, he began to wonder what other beauty he had been blind to, waiting to be discovered in the unlikeliest of places.

Epiphany continued to thrive in its obscurity, drawing seekers and skeptics alike. And Ethan, once a disbeliever, became one of its most ardent advocates, his own journey proof that art truly existed in the eye of the beholder.

Peter von Hauerland