Art Myth #3: What I do isn't really 'art'

I thought that today I'd ask a really important question. 

People sometimes say to me that the work they produce 'isn't really art'.

But 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, just as adults do. Most people make art for the sheer joy of doing so. The only difference between a professional artist and anyone else is that they get paid for their work. But they are all artists and they all create equally valid art. 

We don’t know for sure why our ancestors painted images of wild beasts on cave walls, but it's doubtful that they thought they were making art. They were simply expressing themselves. Or perhaps there was some ritual or magical element to it (many were painted inside pitch black caves where they were hardly putting their work on show). 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. The point is that it was art being created not for a gallery or to make money. It was just raw human creativity in action.

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 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. So, even though these works were accomplished and technically brilliant, in some ways they are less purely 'art' than the cave paintings.

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. Flowers and butterflies and decorously coloured coral reef fish are lovely things but their colours and shapes have evolved for a purpose - the fact that we find them beautiful is neither here nor there. Nature is not an artist although, of course, artists can incorporate them into an artwork or be inspired by them. 

And, on the subject of nature, some animals 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 you made art. You're an artist.

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, as we discussed yesterday, that there will always be art you like and art that you don’t. But that's a good thing because if all agreed on what 'good' art is, our galleries would be as boringly homogenous. 

Famously, in the mid-1990s, 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 nationwide survey was conducted to determine what Americans wanted in a painting. As Komar said at the time, 'It is a collaboration with a new dictator - Majority.' The survey revealed that 44% of Americans said they preferred the colour blue, 49% of them liked outdoor scenes – particularly if they included lakes, rivers, and oceans - while 41% expressed a preference for large paintings and 56% said they would rather have historical figures in their paintings than contemporary ones. Animals were almost universally popular too. And ‘realistic’ art was more popular than abstract art. 

Blue. Outdoors. A lake. Historical figures. Animals. 

The results were then turned into a painting called America's Most Wanted (see below). Logically, it should be  the perfect picture as it hits the brief exactly. But how many people would want to hang it on their walls?

It does nothing for me. I find it pretty uninspiring and confusing.   

Komar and Melamid proved a point here - you can't create art by public vote or by committee. They also asked people what they didn't like in art and produced this piece as the result:

I'm not keen on that one either ... but I prefer it to the first. 

You may disagree. Or you may like, or dislike, both. But that's fine.

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.

So, I come back to my starter question - What is art?

The Institutional Theory of Art states that art 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. Whether the viewer likes it or not is neither here nor there – as stated in the video at the top of this blog, something becomes art when an artist 'puts it out there to be appreciated'. Or not.

Functionalist Theory suggests 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 as it's only being used for a utilitarian purpose. 

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. That, of course, is in direct opposition to the Functionalist Theory. However, many pieces of Land Art fit into this category as they are ephemeral and will soon be destroyed by the weather or the environment they are in. But lack of permanency - even if the finished piece only survives long enough to be photographed - doesn't mean it isn't art.

 

Art by Nils-Udo (left) and Andy Goldsworthy (right).

And there are many, many more definitions and theories, some of which - as you can see - contradict each other. So it's hard to know who is right (if, indeed, anyone 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 a human. It's not made by Nature or natural processes. There must be a conscious, guiding hand behind it. It's possible that some 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. Art has no function other than to be art.

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 quite tight - and you’ll get three different pieces. Their interpretations will differ. Their choice of materials will differ. And the sum total of their life experiences will influence their decision making.

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. 

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. 

Literally, anything goes. 

So, there we go. Art is wood and stone, wool and felt, paint and canvas, icing and marzipan, 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 of a horse, a decorous wedding cake, an exciting new piece of architecture, a hand-thrown pottery teapot, or a 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.