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Everything About Art Explained:

How to Make Universal Art

by Chris Sunami

Your work will be universal if it deals with themes or problems that are relevant to people of all times and places.

This, however, opens a wide range of possibilities. It is also important to realize that a great work of art by its nature is relevant to a wide range of problems, including ones the artist may not have intended or even ones of which he or she may have been unaware. Thus, even a highly specific or personally relevant artwork may achieve universality through sheer quality.

Below is an incomplete list of some universal problems together with some approaches that address them:

Problem: Successfully weathering the stages of the human life cycle.

Artistic Approach: Art that takes one or more of the following universal themes of human existence as its subject: Growing up, leaving home, falling in love, experiencing heartbreak, growing old, death, sibling dynamics, struggles with parents, dreams and visions, celebrations, roads and journeys, war, crime and punishment, etc.
Problem: Relating to nature.

Artistic Approach: Depiction of allusions or references to one or more of the following: The sun, moon and stars, the elements (earth, sky, wind, water, fire, stone), the passing seasons, trees and animals, natural disasters.
Problem: Navigating the difficulties of personal identity.

Artistic Approach: Self-portraits, work with repeating patterns that interact with copies of themselves.
Problem: Problem-solving, considered in a general or abstract way.

Artistic Approach: Geometric visual patterns, and music following complex rules of harmony and counterpoint.
Problem: Communication, relating sound to meaning, problems of translation.

Artistic Approach: Representational art, rhymed or metrical poetry, variations on a theme.
Problem: Understanding or coming to grips with questions of gender and sexuality.

Artistic Approach: Performances by figures who are androgynous, hypermasculine or hyperfeminine, dressed in drag, or some combination thereof.
Problem: Relating to a group as an individual, interacting with society.

Artistic Approach: Verse and chorus or call and response in songs, theme and variation.
Problem: Relating to God and/or the universe, considered as a whole.

Artistic Approach: Religious art, meditative or trance-inducing art, visionary or mystical art.

Two additional universal themes that pervade the world of art are the expression of emotions and the making of moral choices, both of which can be approached in too many disparate ways to be catalogued here.

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