I will use this blog to occasionally discuss broader subjects related to art and the work of the artist. And I thought I'd start today by asking the biggest question of all ...
What actually is art?
It's a toughie isn't it?
‘Art’ is a curiously difficult beast to pin down.
For a start, it depends on your perspective. Here, in the West, the Encyclopaedia Britannica calls art: ‘The use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others’.
What’s interesting about that definition is that applies as equally to artwork produced by primary school children as it does to works by Rousseau or Kahlo or Klimt. Children make aesthetic judgements, as do amateur artists. Most people make art for the sheer joy of doing so and to share that joy with others. The only difference between a professional artist and anyone else is that they get paid for their work. But they all create equally valid art.

However, there is a lot of work we call 'art' that doesn't fit that definition. We don’t know for sure why our ancestors painted images of wild beasts on cave walls, but it's doubtful that they were doing it purely to express themselves. Most probably there was some ritual or magical element to it (many were painted inside caves where they were hardly 'sharing with others'). Or perhaps it was an early form of visual record keeping that existed before writing? After all, many ancient writing systems - such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Cuneiform, Ogham and Chinese Kanji - use characters that are more like drawings than what we would recognise as letters. And, when we look at the beautiful frescoes and ceilings of churches and cathedrals, we have to ask ourselves – were these paintings done as 'art'? Certainly, in the ancient world, artists were viewed in the same way as plumbers and carpenters - they were simply artisan makers and technicians. Things had changed by the time of the Renaissance but, even then, the artwork was rarely an extension of the artist's personality. It was more about reflecting the desires of the patron and, in the case of large religious pieces, to cement the power of the church.
The online Farlex Free Dictionary says that art is, ‘Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature’. That's an interesting one. Rocks that have been sculpted into curious shapes by wind, rain, sea and volcanic upheaval can be beautiful but, without conscious effort to create them, they are just happy accidents. They are not art and Nature is not an artist. Of course, artists can incorporate them into an artwork or be inspired by them but they are not art in their raw form. Similarly, flowers are not art and nor are butterflies or decorously coloured coral reef fish. Their colours and shapes have evolved for a purpose - the fact that we find them beautiful is neither here nor there. And, on the subject of animals, they may be able to splash paint onto a canvas but they are not creating art - there is no conscious aesthetic decision-making going on. They're just having fun - the same fun they'd have if you replaced the paints with water. Be very wary of videos showing elephants that supposedly can paint - it's been proven time and again that they are reacting to silent commands from their handlers. It's all done for the tourists.
The Oxford English Dictionary says that art is ‘the products of human creativity’ and the Miriam-Webster Dictionary describes it as ‘the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects’.
Skill, creativity and imagination, eh? You can’t tell me that you haven’t ever employed all of these things to make something that looks nice. Maybe you’ve made a birthday cake and decorated it. Or you’ve arranged flowers at a loved one’s wedding. Or designed a garden. Whatever you’ve done, you’ve used some form of artistic expression.
So did you make a work of art? I reckon you probably did. Art is not the sole preserve of people who get exhibited in galleries. Every human is capable of artistic expression.
I’d argue that it’s impossible to sum up what art is in a single handy definition. Some thinkers and academics have suggested that we don’t even try.
Leo Tolstoy insisted that what makes something art is how it is perceived by the person experiencing it; in other words, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And it’s true that there will always be art you like and art you don’t. But does that mean that the stuff we don’t like isn’t art ... even if it is art to someone who likes it?
Famously, two dissident Russian artists called Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid set out to discover what a true "people's art" would look like. Using a professional marketing firm, a survey was conducted to determine what Americans wanted in a painting. The resultswere then turned into a painting called America's Most Wanted.
And it's pretty awful.
Komar and Melamid proved a point here - you can't create art by committee. Art is all about individual expression and individual taste. One person's masterpiece is another person's trash and no single piece of art is ever going to be universally loved and valued.
The Institutional Theory of Art states that art only becomes art when it’s labelled as such. For example, no one thought that a urinal with ‘R Mutt 1917’ written on it could be art until Marcel Duchamp placed it within the context of art. But even then, I imagine many people still look at it and think ‘But isn’t that just a urinal?’
Well, yes it is. But Duchamp was using it in an artistic way. If you think about it, things like clay, paint, marble, pencils, fabric, wood ... they’re all just ‘things’ until someone uses them in an artistic way. Then it becomes art. Whether the viewer likes it or not is neither here nor there – it’s still art.
And then there's the Functionalist movement. They suggested that art is only art if it performs an artistic function, which is an interesting idea. It would mean that a Henry Moore sculpture used as a doorstop would therefore no longer be art.
Yet another theory – the Proceduralist Theory - suggests that art is defined by the process the artist went through to create it, regardless of public reception or the use to which it is put afterwards.
There are many many more definitions and theories, some of which even contradict each other.
So how do we define what art is?
If we must insist on some kind of a definition, we can at least pull together several common themes:
1. Art is something created by Man. It's not made by Nature or natural processes. There must be a conscious, guiding hand behind it. It's possible that very smart animals - such as our closest relatives the apes - may have a rudimentary aesthetic sense. But, if so, it's very underdeveloped. Animals rarely make things that have no obvious purpose or use.
2. Art is an extension or expression of the artist’s personality.
Give three different artists the same commission to create an artwork - even if the brief is very tight - and you’ll get three different pieces.
3. Art is Aesthetic.
This is a word that comes to us from ancient Greek and it means ‘to heighten or stimulate feelings’ (the opposite, incidentally, is ‘anaesthetic’ which means to shut them down or numb them).
Art doesn't have to be beautiful. But it should be something that provokes a reaction, even if it is only a sense of satisfaction or pleasure in the person creating it. Art can make people angry. It can make people cry. It can make them wonder. Art is all about feelings and emotion.
Interestingly, despite all of my reading and having asked lots of people what art is, no one – not one single person so far – has ever suggested to me that art is the sole preserve of professionals. Nor has anyone ever claimed that art isn’t art until it has a monetary value or critical acclaim. And no one has ever said to me that art is limited to certain kinds of expression or specific subjects. Anything goes.
So, there we go. Some people make art with paint and canvas, some with icing and marzipan. Art is wood and stone, wool and felt, photo and video, pastels and pencils, even frozen bodily fluids or dead sharks in tanks of formaldehyde. Art is formal and informal, permanent and transient, figurative and abstract. Some art is photographically precise while other pieces are seemingly unfathomable. It’s found objects assembled in new ways. It’s a beautiful ballet, a sculpture, a wedding cake or a posed photo of your grandmother gamboling in a field of poppies.
Art is whatever you decide it is. And an artist is someone who creates art because they are driven to do so - it's as simple as that.
As Dale Carnegie once said, ‘The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.’
I can't argue with that.