cinco!
my niece’s portrait of her ugly doll – how awesome is that?
Archive for tag Art
Art.
What is art?
If questions were guns, then that one would be a fully loaded shotgun. Ranking up there with politics and religion, the debate on what art is invokes a reaction from all.
Generally people have a vague notion that art is something that everyone agrees is art. That art is cultured, refined, high-brow, sophisticated. That art must be appreciated to be art. Art is that which is hung in museum galleries and fawned over by elite scholars who write detailed analyses describing their value and meaning. People believe these scholars and nod their knowing agreement, sure that they too see the same value that the experts have ascribed.
At the other extreme there are those who say that all that I’ve just described is emphatically not art. That art is the living, breathing, messy, chaotic act of creation. That art in museums is dead works and that true art is that which is happening all around us.
Some say that if something is fun then it isn’t art. That movies and comics and videogames and television and books can never be art because they are made not to express a feeling but to entertain and delight.
Some say art must be beautiful. Some say art must be meaningful. Some say art must be passionate.
I have a serious problem with all of these claims and, in fact, the very debate itself. Every single one of these claims are all predicated on the fact that art must be something. It doesn’t. Art is what it is and what it is is entirely, completely, and utterly subjective. There is no debate here because it all comes down to personal perception. No one can make a genuinely compelling argument about the true definition of art because it is not possible to rationally argue an aesthetic point of view.
For example, I happen to think that industrial architecture is both artistic and aesthetically pleasing. If I talk with someone who disagrees on both of these counts there is no way for me to make a logical case and prove that, yes, an electrical switching station is conclusively beautiful. To be sure, I could make my case. I could try and help this person to see through my eyes via example and description; but this is not proof, merely experience.