Why I love art, just not so much the gallery kind
Art galleries. Basel’s full of them, and yet I almost never go inside. For years I quietly suspected this made me some sort of cultural lightweight, the sort of person who admires the ticket desk more than the canvases. Whenever I do step into a gallery, I usually end up drawn less to the art and more to the building itself. The way a staircase curves. The hush of a long corridor. The geometry of a well-lit atrium. I can happily stand in a thoughtfully designed space for ages, absorbing the lines and proportions, while the art around me remains slightly out of reach.
Where the feeling actually lives
For a long time I mistook this for a personal failing. Surely everyone else sees something in those rooms that I don’t. I appreciate the craft of painting and sculpture, of course, but they often feel static and remote, as if the real emotion’s been sealed away. I can admire them, even respect them, but I rarely feel anything shift. There’s a formality to it all that leaves me standing at a distance, nodding politely.
Eventually I realised that I do like art. I just find most of it elsewhere, in places that feel a little more alive and a little more human.
Music’s always been the quickest route in. A song can undo me in seconds. It’s honestly the only art form that’s ever made me cry. There’s something about the mix of lyrics, musicianship and melody that bypasses all the usual filters. It feels direct in a way galleries rarely do. No explanations, no posture, no theory. Just feeling, and the way it can instantly conjure a place or a memory you’d forgotten you were carrying.
Books often carry that same charge. A good novel or non-fiction book can shift my thinking without announcing its intentions, and I can’t wait to read the next page. A tiny turn of phrase can reveal a truth you didn’t realise you were circling. Poetry does it in an even tighter frame. A few lines can land with more force than entire exhibitions. When it works, it feels as though someone’s taken a thought you half-recognised and set it down, perfectly formed, right in front of you.
And then there’s film, or more and more these days, a well-made television series. Long-form storytelling, when it’s done with confidence, has an extraordinary ability to draw you in and keep its hand gently on your shoulder. Characters take shape. Worlds settle around you. A moment in episode six returns to you on a Tuesday afternoon. The good stuff lingers. It changes the weather in your head.
What I finally learned about art
It took me longer than it should’ve to understand that this is the kind of art I respond to, the sort that tells a story and moves or unfolds in a way that feels unmistakably human. It doesn’t need a gallery or a plaque on the wall; it just needs to connect and carry something true.
So yes, I do love art. I love it deeply, in fact. I just find most of it not in the carefully curated rooms of a museum, but in songs, books, films and the quiet brilliance of a building that’s got something to say. That’s where the real spark lives for me, and I’m glad I’ve worked that out at last.