What makes contemporary art interesting?

The most passionate love, a successful career, an intimate friendship, delicious food and money – all these, however wonderful, can sometimes seem insufficient for art-lovers who do not make art a part of their lives. Art can bring enormous added value and pleasure to our lives, through the work and ideas of the artist, in which we can share. In this sense we are dependant on artists; we want somebody to show us films, write music for us, decorate our homes with attractive paintings, shock us with amoral exhibitions and actions. We want people to help make art a natural part of our lives. "Art shouldn't be something that you go quietly into an art gallery and dip your forelock and say 'I have to be very quiet, I'm in here amongst the art.' It's here, art's everywhere. It's how you use your eyes. It's about the enjoyment of visual things." – Ken Done, well-known Australian artist and designer of "Done Design" brand.

Art has existed right from the beginning. Art was invented earlier than civilization as we usually define it. And interest in art never fails. Artists always suffer the throes of creation, galleries hunt down new talents, auction houses earn money, youth stands in queues for new exhibitions and connoisseurs of art continue to spend their money. And there are no signs that this process will ever stop. The major reason for this is that art is an integral part of ourselves. All over the world, children take pencils in their hands and start to draw, and no one tells them what and how to draw. They just start doing it.

And perhaps no one can express the other aspect of our continued interest better than the words of prominent American realist painter and printmaker Edward Hopper - "If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint." Art is a method of communication, to which we turn when we can`t find words but we understand something and have to communicate it, or share it in some way. Art comes to our aid when we are disturbed, worrying or happy, when we are full of emotions, when we feel that we can change the world.

Art is part of our history and a part of how we know our history. It shows the problems, beliefs, values and views of a particular culture at a particular period of time. Art keeps records of our own lives and experiences that will represent our age in the future – our own version of the primitive drawings that prehistoric man created in caves to mark mammoth hunts and other aspects of life at the time.

And of course we love art because it opens a new world for us: incomprehensible and alluring. Sometimes art helps us to escape from day to day routine and problems, and allows us just to sit and relax; sometimes it forces us to think and to change something; sometimes for no particular reason that we are conscious of it makes us smile and dance. And of course, finally, art is a way we dream; a great example is Henri Rousseau who is famous for his fascinating jungle scenes, even though he never saw a jungle. What all of this means, is that art is part of what it means to be human.