Luxury, from the latin “luxus,” is synonymous with excess. When excess is tempered by experience and skill, poise is what remains. Poise in art is expressed using meticulous intention.
Details are evident through intentionality, and intention of detail takes time to inculcate. Things that have more details have received more intention. This focus on intention becomes the highest form of artistic sophistication, as it aligns with the pursuit of creating something resonant, where meaning and form are carefully harmonized.
All artists bear the responsibility to communicate meaning using form. The form can vary, however the meaning that is communicated by the form ought to be understood either overtly or covertly, as form without meaning is no more profound than a houseplant.
The obfuscation of meaning in artwork compels the viewer to come to their own conclusion, which will always be perceived as more authentic than if the meaning was handed to the viewer on a silver platter. Otherwise, the experience of viewing the artwork wouldn’t involve any epiphany and would easily be dismissed.
The simple act of obfuscating requires intentionality to be successful. The more layers, or veils of obscurity an artwork has, the more complex it becomes. However, complexity of the psyche is not required to peel back the veils, rather, simplicity of the mind is needed. Minds of children come to conclusions that seem almost non-sequitur in nature, but these conclusions are more accurately portrayed as a freedom of mental plané, or Greek for “wandering,” allowing the viewer to make connections that rigid minds would never arrive to.
Rigid thinking creates an indefinite moratorium of understanding, disallowing the emotional expression the viewer may undergo when viewing artwork. Salvador Dalí famously said “Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”
In the end, it is poise—the balance of intention and obfuscation—that invites us to experience art not as a static object but as an evolving dialogue. This dialogue, made possible by stripping away excess and tempering it with skill, gives art its resonance; and the resonance begins with luxus.