Design evokes emotion.
Good art evokes strong emotion.
My mother-in-law is a contemporary artist.
For close to a decade she focused on the theme of “War and Play”.
Her body of work for her degree was aptly called “Weapons of mass destruction – Games people play”
One of her first works focused on Tisha Baav and included references to terrorist attacks.
It was a massive canvas and featured a printed section of Eicha amongst a large knife with “blood” on it that cut right through the canvas!
She hung this picture in the entrance hall of her home.
And it was great art. Why? Because it evoked tremendously strong emotion when you looked at it!
I did argue with her though that the strong uncomfortable emotion it evoked was not best suited to the entrance hall of her home!!
(It eventually did find another place on one of the inner walls.)
But it shows how careful we have to be with what we put on our walls and what emotions it evokes within us and our family.
A home should be calm and peaceful and full of strong values.
So should the artworks on your walls.
That’s why it took us so long to find the right Gedolim portraits in the right design and medium for our home.
Modern, identifiable and strong but calming.
