Why does Art make you cry?/p>

Have you ever cried whilst experiencing art? Be it painting, song, performance or prose. I tried thinking back to the last time I cried to art and gave a null until I remembered art encompasses much more than traditional fine paintings. The last time I cried was to a song. Why? I already felt terrible, and the song carefully pinched and pulled those feelings out of me. That is the crux of why art makes you cry: a strong emotional reaction.

A strong emotional reaction….to what? I think it comes down to a range of options. Perhaps it simply mirrors your emotional state (like with my example), it produces a new emotional state, or it amplifies emotions you’ve been trying to hide. How does art even do this? How could words or visuals create such a strong emotional response in us? It comes down to our own biology and the way we react to the external world. Emotions are heuristics to point us towards the “correct” direction, where we are more likely to live better and longer and eventually reproduce. Emotions are a strange mix of rational and irrational causes. Our brains learn to link up our emotions to certain cues with experiences we have learned in the past. Although a lot of is a blackbox, we don’t reallyyy know what the brain is doing.

Lets start with art mirroring your emotional state. One could argue that art gives a safe space for your mind’s walls to collapse and truly feel for once. We live in such hectic times, every moment can feel like a struggle to keep yourself in, no one moment is truly yours to just experience. But when we are exposed to art, it begs us to tap into this feeling-mode. And when that happens, the barrage of emotions we’ve been keeping up all day tumble out and we let it out - by crying. Or you could argue this collapse of mental fortitude could also be another heuristic. We’re told that art should make you ‘feel’ that you’re meant to cry and experience. So when we are faced with art (so very uncommon in todays age) we respond the way we are taught to. The explanation I like the most is that we see ourselves in the art and we recognise our emotional state or a part of ourselves there which we feel no one recognises. And this act of recognition is the spark that sets alight our emotions. To be recognised and seen is an increasingly difficult feeling, and the realisation of perhaps we could’ve been recognised by some other person who at some moment in time also felt the same is bittersweet. Comforting in its own way, but mocking in another - a deep reminder that you can only get this recognition in art that doesn’t truly see you back.

How does art amplify your emotions? One aspect is the novelty and grandeur of it. I’m pretty sure that I was brought to near tears once when I was looking at this beautiful, massive painting. And part of it was how small I felt and how grand the painting seemed in comparison. I was telling myself “I’m experiencing art” so I let myself become more volatile and therefore brought to tears. Although this is a near reproduction of my earlier argument where art breaks down your mental walls, I’m now also arguing that by doing so we put ourselves in a more vulnerable position where we are more open to experiencing intense emotions. We let ourselves get swayed by the crashing crecendo; we let ourselves get enchanted by the unusual brush strokes; we let ourselves vividly imagine the emotions of the writer. We were happy before, but now we allow ourselves to get intoxicated in this happiness when we see a piece that we see that happiness in. We let the whole world become this happiness. This is all so similar to art creating a new emotional state.

When we break down our walls, we don’t just allow our inclinations to get stronger but are open to newer unforeseen fascinations. Perhaps we notice an aspect we have never noticed before. Or we link something to an experience we’ve had before and see the art in a new light. Importantly, we get reminded of our experiences. We are pattern matching creatures and even the most obscure things can match to something we have felt before. We can traverse our past memories and emotions and potentially get stuck on one. This new emotion could be stronger or weaker than our current one, but looking back at the past argument of our openness and vulnerability, most likely a stronger one will be induced.