People call art an indulgence because they can’t measure it.
Sport gives you closure. A score. A winner and a loser. You can go home knowing the result. No ambiguity. No loose ends.
Art refuses that.
There’s no finishing line, no scoreboard to settle the debate. No neat bow to tie it all up. Art forces you to sit with discomfort, with mystery, with questions that don’t have answers. That’s confronting for most. They’d rather be told who won.
And then there’s the obsession with meaning. What does it mean? What’s it saying?
That’s the wrong question. Art isn’t an equation waiting to be solved. It isn’t a sermon, a lecture, or a riddle. It doesn’t owe you a moral or a conclusion.
Art just is.
That’s why it feels like indulgence to some, because it doesn’t produce in the way they’re used to measuring value. But that doesn’t make it frivolous. It makes it essential.
I have conviction in what I do. I don’t need to convince anyone else. The work itself is the statement. The rest is noise.