Who is your audience? / Qui est votre public?

I remember one night, during college, when I was working late in the computer lab. This other young woman asked me to proofread something for her, and we got to talking about our majors. She was in engineering, I was in art. On hearing this she blurted out, “but why do you like it? Art is so boring!” I showed her some of the art I liked, some ethereal-looking horse sculptures, but she was unimpressed. I asked her if there was any kind of art she liked and she couldn’t think of any. She was worried I’d been offended by her honesty, but I was so utterly charmed! It’s just not something you hear… perhaps a lot of people pretend to like art?

I thought of this incident, because it offered one very specific answer to the question, “Who is not your audience?”

Fascinating!  And it makes me wonder if there isn’t some posturing there.  Like this woman was so frustrated by not finding any art she could connect with that she gave up and made “a thing” out of it.  She became the person who finds art boring. 

I’ve met people who were not particularly enthused by art, but never anyone who denied liking art at all.  If I did, I would probably want to sign the person up for brain experiments to figure out what made them different and unable to enjoy art.

You know, she seemed so sincere, like it just sort of came out of her mouth and she instantly regretted it; however, I know that I wanted to take her at face value because it was such an amusing idea.

I wonder what her home looks like. There’s got to be a clue there!