In order for any work of art — for example, a film, a novel, a poem, or a song — to have merit, it must be understandable to most people.

“This world is but a canvas to our imagination”. This saying holds true as our oldest memories of art come from over 40, 000 years ago and for the same period of time, art has generated discussion, debate, and even turmoil. For what it's worth, art has also engendered much confusion. In response, the prompt suggests that, for a work of art to have “merit, ” it must be comprehensible to the majority of its observers. However, I mostly disagree with this stance for the following two reasons, although I do concede that, if the goal of an artist is to spread awareness of a particular issue, then it should be comprehended by the masses to be propitious. First of all, in many cases, art is made either for a subset of the population or for the artist themself, not necessarily for a large group of people or a significant segment of society. For instance, “famous” artists consider it a point of pride that their art is not for lay people, or, condescendingly, for the “masses” as they are commonly referred to. To provide another example, the films that are shown at the Cannes Film Festival are often ambiguous in nature, a characteristic that is considered a virtue rather than a fault. Finally, a great number of artists (especially painters), do their activity not for any outside validation, but only as an inward expression of their feelings, difficulties, and anxieties. A perfect example would be Banksy, a famous - but anonymous - British graffiti artist. He keeps his identity a secret, and produces pieces of work which pop up in public places, such as on the walls of buildings. A lot of his art is done in a particular style which garnered plenty of negative responses in the start due to his anonymity and the recondite characteristic of his work but later he started catching everyone's attention due to the same reason and is now one of the publicly renowned artists. Not to mention, his works now sell at private auctions for millions of dollars. If many artists, by their own admission, do not want their works to be understood by a great majority of people, then, by definition, art does not have to be comprehensible to many in order to have merit. If the art has “merit” according to the artist themself, then the strong assertion made in the prompt does not apply. Secondly, the purpose of art is, at a fundamental level, to not necessarily be “understandable, ” but rather to generate discussion and provoke feelings. Art is abstract and depends totally on the artist's discretion. The direction, the emotion and message fully depends on the artist. Most songs are written with a significant meaning, but never have artists really divulged the real meaning to any of their songs. An example of Taylor Swift, visionary musical artist and pop sensation, her lyrical genius and songs have always taken the world by storm. Not once has she revealed the true meaning and infact states in her various interviews that she would want the audience to interpret the music in their way. Here, a room for imagination is left by the artist themself to create a sense of connection to the artform in question and make a deeper bond with the art. Initially, in Taylor’s career, her poppy, relatable songs did egregiously until she shifted to her raw poetic choice of words and honest personal songs which then did notably well for its composition. This shift in her artistic design made her one of the richest and most successful musicians of all time. If artists start focusing on making their art accessible to the people to gain merit, it might not always work in their favour. Instead artists that focus on art that is true to their core, that might not be always understandable, result in creating better art, in turn gaining them significant credit. Unless art is made intentionally to create awareness to a certain topic of importance, it should be intelligible. When art is used to spread knowledge, used as a tool to spread the message should invoke a sense of understanding to the targeted audience. Making this experience hard for the audience would be foolish and wouldn’t generate the outcome expected. For instance, if there were a blood donation campaign, an ambiguous campaign video shared among the masses instead of a straightforward one would result in confusion among the public, resulting in a failing blood donation drive. Instead, sticking to an understandable video that conveys the message of the pros of blood donation directly would yield a better outcome. In situations as such, where the message to be shared is defined and highly imperative, letting the art be open to interpretation could lead to scepticism and a distorted message being shared. Instead, promulgating coherent art would be the best approach, getting the job done and getting due “merit” for it. While some may argue, art that is lucid is more successful while others may say art should be equivocal, this argument is a complex one. However, the purpose of art is not to produce a product but to produce thinking. And as history has proved, art that is nebulous gains its due eminence in time.