In our discussion about what it means to be an artist, the question of the definition of art came up more than once. This issue–what exactly IS art?–has been the subject of all kinds of learned debate, study, essays and books. So why not tackle it in a single blog post? The things I do for my readers! (Not that I’m complaining–it gives me the perfect excuse to use this image I found the other day.)
Hmm... is this art?
So what are some factors we can consider?
1. Exposure/size of audience: Has nothing to do with whether something is art. Pop/rock musicians and TV shows reach an audience of millions, whereas new classical music works are sometimes lucky to break into the thousands. We can get into an argument about low vs. high art, but let’s not.
2. Opinions of the experts: Have been proven wrong in the past, and are likely to again in the future. Critical acclaim is great, but who among us hasn’t read the rejection letters from expert editors regarding books that later became classics?
3. The Ka-ching! factor: Has nothing to do with whether something is art. Some people make a lot of money from art they create…and some people really don’t. Take Vincent Van Gogh from Tuesday’s post. He made hardly any money from his art, and is anybody really going to argue with me that Starry Night is not art? Anyone?
4. Skill: So maybe most of us agree that Starry Night is art. But what about that novel you trunked? What about your kid’s crayon drawing of the family that she spent several days on, but that consists of stick figures? What about your first musical performance, when you cracked on that high note? What about that song that consists of three chords? Is that song art if it has a catchy melody as well? What if it has especially original lyrics? What if it’s a parody of another popular song? Yeah, this category is tricky.
5. Artistic freedom: How much control over the work of art does the artist have, and does this affect its classification as art or not-art? For example, is graphic design to a client’s specifications art? What about animating someone else’s graphics/story? (Is that any different from a singer or actor interpreting a song or script? If so, how?) What about a tie-in novel with pre-existing characters and a pre-approved plot? How about if an opera company commissions you to compose an opera? That’s definitely art, right? So how is it different from any of the above scenarios? (I’d argue that in this case, the composer retains most of the artistic vision for the project. But what about portraiture?)
6. Intent: The idea that art can be defined by the intent of its creator. So if I put my dog’s paws into paint and let her walk around a blank canvas, she is not an artist. Maybe I am though, if I had the idea of making art based on this plan. If I’m singing in the shower and not thinking about it, that’s not art, but if I’m performing in front of a room of my students, perhaps it is. What about when I’m practicing that performance by myself? This is the broadest definition of art, and the one I resonate with the most, as a teacher as well as an artist. Were my singing and piano students not artists because they hadn’t achieved mastery yet? No, but I’d argue that some of them were perhaps not artists because they didn’t understand or care about what they were doing (and therefore lacked artistic intent).
7. Art is in the eye of the beholder. In which case it is inherently defined by those experiencing it as opposed to those creating it. Although do you experience it while creating it? What about afterwards?
I know, I’m asking a lot more questions than I’m answering. I’m hoping some of you will be moved to comment and tell me your opinions about the questions I’ve raised. So let me leave you with one final question:
A few years ago, in a sublime and slightly insane act, I decided to create a mosaic as part of the decorations for a Greek/Norse Gods & Goddesses party I was throwing. I don’t know anything about mosaics. I’ve seen a few in Portugal, but that’s about it. So I bought some materials and a book telling me how to do it, and I got to work. I spent hours and hours on this piece. In the middle, I got RSI in my hand from squeezing the glue container (I kid you not) so I had to recruit my husband to squeeze the glue while I painstakingly placed each tile. Here is the finished result:
As I said, I know next to nothing about mosaics, and this was my first attempt and therefore most likely a flawed and amateurish effort. The skill wasn’t there, the money certainly wasn’t, and everyone was so involved in other aspects of the party that they hardly noticed the mosaic (ah, party planning 101). I did, however, have complete artistic freedom and an intention to create art. So my question is, is this mosaic art? Or not art?
I can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
The Practical Free Spirit 
ARRGGGH! Amy, you made my head spin! I love this conversation, though. Art is … whoah.
It hurts my brain too. And it’s not done yet. I was talking to my husband about it last night, and he said I had to write another post about what I said to him. 🙂
Here’s my first answer (I suspect there will be more – it’s just the way I roll…).
And a couple of caveats right off the bat: I think I know less about art now than I did 20+ years ago (I received a BFA in Painting). I also talk out of my ass sometimes.
I think art changes over time (of course), but since the advent of the camera – where we no longer need art to faithfully capture our visage, our world, etc. – I believe that art has become more about challenge. Sometimes it’s there to challenge the artist’s thinking, and sometimes to challenge the viewers (sometimes both!).
Commercial work – the stuff I do for my clients, the mass-produced “art” sold to hang over your couch, many (but not all) quick-street-art – is done for money. It may be mass-produced or carefully crafted, but it’s done with the intent to appease others and in no way challenge them. I certainly don’t want to challenge my clients – I want to create a great looking piece that doesn’t take too long to create and something I can charge well for.
If I were to create art I would first be working for myself primarily. I could think about other points, other uses, creating something to fit a specific need, but I would throw away my concerns about time and hourly rates. I would work it, and rework it, and work it some more because I would have an overwhelming need to do so. This is part of the challenge.
That’s not to say the end result would be art. Perhaps it’s art and not Art (capitalized) – though, as someone who really enjoys process, I don’t often care about the end results. Perhaps that, too, is what (for me) defines art – not actually caring about the end results, but working hard to create regardless of where you end up.
When I was in school I remember seeing articles and videos about Mark Kostabi. He was an “artist” (still is perhaps – I don’t know) who had a warehouse set up where he paid other artists to create art that he would sign and sell – for a shitload of money. He rarely created stuff himself (if I’m remembering correctly) and of course many people were against that as art. To me, he was an artist for challenging what is art – and perhaps defining very succinctly the 80s. There were (and probably still are) artists like this and while I may not like the results, the ideas, the efforts, the approach is artistic.
I have more thoughts in my head, but I’ll end this one on your last question – the mosaic. Is it art? I don’t know. I think I would be a fool to say yes or no. From what you say I think you approached it with an artistic intent. I might more easily say it was craft – I think many things people create themselves fall into this category – but I don’t think there’s a real line separating the two and probably often bleed into each other (heavily at times). I think calling something “craft” is also a good way to skirt an issue – or perhaps insult someone trying hard. I of course don’t mean to do either – but raise it as a point of discussion.
I consider my commercial work (just about the only thing I do visually any more) in the craft category.
It sounds like you’re saying art has to challenge to be art? I’ll have to think about that. It’s true that as a consumer of art (what a phrase!) I get a certain feeling of satisfaction from art that does challenge me…and of course sometimes the challenge is intellectual, sometimes emotional.
When I think about my musical theater preference, for example, I enjoy some of the light frothy musicals but my favorites are usually more challenging pieces like Light in the Piazza and Next to Normal. So I guess we can start considering degrees in art, so that we move away from black and white and into a more spectrum type of thinking.
Of course, we can also think about the challenge from the creator’s point of view…that in order to be creating art, the artist must be challenged in some way and not just dialing it in, which relates to the question of intent.
I was thinking about John Cage last night, and how what he did in the classical music world was very much a challenge of what music is (and therefore, what art is).
As for the art vs. craft issue, I’d be interested in your definition of “craft.” But on the whole, as I’ve been thinking about art this last week or two, I think sometimes we (meaning people who do artistic work) do a disservice to ourselves to focus only on craft to the complete exclusion of focusing on art. Perhaps this is a reflection of the community I am a part of, more than anything, as I can imagine the flip side of that, ie creators who focus too much on art to the detriment of craft.
Well I did through in the “talking out of my ass” comment for a reason. :p
I do think you explained my challenge idea pretty well, though. If I were a practicing artist I would be finding ways to challenge what I’m doing daily. Why this color, or this color scheme? Why this scale? Why flat and not dimensional? Why paint and not dirt? It’s not that you should always be trying to change or reinvent, but to question yourself, your reasonings, your habits and intents. It should provoke thought within yourself.
Certainly it’s a way to grow, but I also think this process keeps it from becoming routine – and, at least in my mind, routine too easily slides back into craft.
Craft – I’m not sure. Right now I want to say “skill” in your creations without thinking beyond what you’re creating. For my illustration (or animation) work, I often deal with the same things – body, blood vessels, heart, a medical device. My craft is making those look better (not always more realistic), making the image pop more, read better, convey the information more easily. But I’m not thinking about what the forms mean, why am I using these colors (besides them being either realistic or a standard interpretation). Compositionally I try to consider the focus but I don’t go beyond that.
There’s more to it, but I see that as my craft. I’m not bringing an artistic sensibility to it. I am bringing a lot of technique I may have learned as an artist (or at least during my days in art school), but I don’t think that’s quite the same thing as a real artist viewpoint.
I would not say these ideas are fully formed. I’m not reading back through my comments to tweak the ideas to make sure I’m not looking like an idiot. I see this as a discussion where I’m free to be wrong – and certainly not trying to convince anyone (even myself) that this is how it is. But I like these kinds of exchanges and perhaps my viewpoint (even if temporal) at least encourages additional thought or discussion – it probably does for me anyway. 🙂
I still need to go back through your posting – I know there was more I wanted to respond to that I have not yet. But that’s for later.
I dunno. Like most things, it can’t really be defined. It’s a discursively-created term. People use it in all kinds of ways and with all kinds of definitions and some of those definitions are mutually exclusive.
I mean…you can play this sort of game with pretty much anything. Like, what is a job?
Well, you might say, “It’s the labor that a person performs in exchange for money.”
And then I can say, “Well, can gambling be a job?”
And if you said, “No, if you risk capital in order to make a reward something then it’s not a job, it’s a venture,” then I could say “Okay, well, then does that mean that….a sole proprieter, like a plumber, does not have a job?”
Or if you said that gambling _can be_ a job, then I could say, “Alright, well…can ‘searching for a wealthy spouse’ be a job.”
And then you might say that this isn’t a job, because the rewards of the labor need to be constant and not contingent, and then I might say, “Well, fine, so then playing on the Pro Golf tour (where only the top-scoring so and sos get payouts) isn’t a job?”
And so on and so on and so on. And the end result would either be that no one definition could ever encompass all the ways that we use the word ‘job’. The way we use words, in practice, is way too slapdash for us to be able to sit down and actually say something definitive about some word means.
That having been said, though, I think of art in a really broad way. To me, as long as at least one person in the world (including yourself) thinks you’re making art, then it’s art.
“I may not know much about art, but I know what I like.”
For example, the entire abstract impressionist wing of SFMOMA. Don’t like.
Kurt Vonnegut’s “Blue Beard,” a story about abstract impressionists. LIKE!!!
I was humbled (and confused) when visiting SFMOMA with a friend. This friend had studied at the Louvre, and had once given us a one-of-a-kind bilingual tour of all the loot Napoleon had brought back from Italy and is now housed in some museum or another in France. While at SFMOMA, at a display I can only describe as advertisement for Nike, was “Sneakers: 1990-1999” in glass. I was disgusted. My friend really liked the display of shoes-made-in-China-by-child-labor. It was made all the more bizarre because, a) I was wearing a pair of shoes that were on display, and b) this was the same person who had explained to me that Michelangelo had moonlighted as a mortician just so he could dissect cadavers to get the proportions of humans right!
In the end, I think, arts should behave as if the maxim, ars gratia artis, is true. When others pay for or appreciate your art, all the better.
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