Fair warning: this will be my first official tangent. I don’t pretend to be an expert on any subject, and certainly not what I’ll write about on this site. I can rarely put together a meaningful string of words in person, so I’m looking at this space as my opportunity to collect my thoughts.
I saw some designers talk tonight about their work. The format was fairly typical in that they showed a series of slides, talking briefly about each. One idea that a couple of them mentioned was that they aren’t artists. My gut reaction to this idea was to categorically deny it.
Since college, I’ve had a different view of what falls into the classification of Art. I read a book in college that was a series of interviews with artists. In it, one artist defined art simply as the act of making special, and this concept has always stuck with me. It covers every media you could possibly imagine, and really embodies the spirit of the creative process. The most important part of this definition — and this may be just the way I interpret it — is that art becomes Art merely by being identified as such. An artist can call it Art, and if she is the only one there, it’s still Art. If somebody performs an act, if somebody is there to watch it, they can call it Art. It’s a definition completely free of form, technical limitations or outside justification.
So when I’m in a museum, on the street, listening to somebody talk, I hear the phrase, “That’s not Art.” Every single time, it frustrates me. I may not really like the art. I may not think the art is even worth my time, but I’ll never argue that it isn’t Art.
I sincerely wish that more people could just forget the question of what is Art and what isn’t. Admittedly, the Art establishment has created some of these barriers itself, but life is just more worthwhile when Art could be around any corner, waiting to surprise you.
alicia says:
I’ve been continually frustrated about this exact same thing for years now. I drives me up the wall sometimes when people pigeon-hole art as “fine art” not “low brow art” or worse, “that’s not art, it’s illustration.” And those within the art world can be the worst of the bunch labeling ‘art’ and ‘not art.’
I know for me, it was seeing Salman Rushdie speak in our senior year at SU that helped clarify my feelings on the subject of what is art and why do we make it, etc. Someone in the audience had asked him something along the lines of “Why did you wrote this book? What does it mean?” I wish I remembered exactly what he said as a reply, but to roughly paraphrase from my memories of it, it was something along the lines of “I’m an artist and I needed to write it, and so I wrote it. That is all. It’s art. You take what you want from it, interpret it as you see fit, but I do not write for anyone or any purpose other than the act of creation …” He went into more detail, and I am really not doing this moment of epiphany any justice here. : P
Anyway, I remember I felt so relieved to hear someone in world of art, albeit it a different medium than I use, express that art is that which exists because it was created and defined as art — whether it was the executioner or the beholder who gave it its creation and purpose doesn’t matter. Such is art.
Sorry for the ramble, but I just wanted to say I’m solid with you on this one. More rants and tangents welcome, in my book!
Oct 30, 2008, 12:37 amifc says:
Glad you agree Alicia. Thanks for adding your two cents to the conversation. Probably nobody else reads this thing, but it’s fun nonetheless.
I’m a little bummed that I wasn’t there at that Salmon Rushdie talk…but admittedly I’ve never read The Satanic Verses or any of his other books. Certainly can’t slight the guy for sticking to his (metaphorical) guns.
Oct 30, 2008, 9:30 pmDylan says:
I didn’t read your post, can you summarize what you were talking about in a sentence?
Oct 30, 2008, 11:08 am